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63 



STRAY MOMENTS 



THACKERAY 

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Willi 
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WILLIAM H. RIDEING. 




BIDEU 



i\EW TO 

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APPLETONS' NEW HANDY-VOLUME SERIES. .<Ci 



STEAT MOMENTS 



/ WITH 



THACKEEAT 



BEING SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS, PREFACED 
WITH A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



BY 

WILLIAM H. jaiDEING. 

NEW YOEK: 
B. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

1, 3, AiiD 5 BOND STREET. 
1880. 



7^ 



. .'l'"'' 

'■^'s^ 



COPTEIGHT BY 

D. APPLETON AifD COMPANY. 

1880. 



/a.-s^oy 



OONTENTS, 



A Few Biographical Notes 


. Y 


Humor : 




The Amenities of a Literary Career 


27 


The Urgency of Love . 


. 30 


The Back Kitchen .... 


31 


London Studios .... 


. 35 


On Woman's Love .... 


38 


Artist Life in Rome 


. 38 


A Familiar Mystery 


42 


The Baden of Old . 


. 44 


The Wildness of Youth 


47 


On Reverses in Life . 


. 50 


On contemplating Persons in Love . 


53. 


The World not Heartless 


. 54 


On the Prosaic in Life 


55 


The Creatures of Circumstances 


. 56 


A Note ..... 


56 


On the Development of Character 


. 56 


Founder's Day at CIiarter-House . 


57 


The Old Inns of Court . 


. 59 



CONTENTS. 



Against Bachelorhood 

On the Formation of Character 

The Sameness of Life 

On Youth and Age 

A Note .... 

Satire : 

On Beautiful Women . 

The Old Beau 

The Blindness of Maternity 

How to hold a Wife's Love 

The Inevitable Skeleton 

On looking out for Number One . 

On Hypocrisy in Women 

The Pursuit of Croesus 

On Friendship among Young Women . 

On the Adoration of Princes 

The Secrecy of Human Nature . 

The Pagan Martyrs 

The Good Old Country Gentleman 

On Respected Old Age 

On being crossed in Love 

Ancient and Modern Culture and Manners 

Character : 

George I . . . . 

George II . 

George III . 

George IV . 

The Duke of Marlborough 



CONTENTS. 



Richard Steele 

Addison 

Swift 

Hogarth 

Prior 

Gay 

Congreve 

Pope 

Smollett and Fielding 

Sterne and Goldsmith 



PAGE 

129 

140 
156 
167 
169 
170 
172 
176 
180 
185 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



Vert little need be said of Thackeray's life 
or his works. They have an obviousness uncom- 
mon in literature. Both are clear, direct, and in- 
telligible. There are no doubts about the conduct 
of one, nor about the meaning of the other, and a 
commentator or biographer is unembarrassed by 
the hesitation and uncertainty that usually occur in 
elucidating the intentions and deciding the posi- 
tion of most literary men. His early life had 
none of the extraordinary and picturesque vicissi- 
tudes of Dickens's, and his manhood none of the 
eventfulness of Scott's, nor the mystic atmos- 
phere of Hawthorne's. 

With William Makepeace Thackeray came 
into the world a man who lived tlie life suited to 
him, little opposed by adverse circumstances, and 
who described what he saw without flattery, with- 



8 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

out bitterness, but with immense candor. It has 
been said of him that he was a cynic, and unfair 
in striking the balance between good and evil in 
the world. He was veracious, and it is this qual- 
ity — the absence of artifice in his methods and of 
duplicity in his conclusions — that makes his genius 
seem to us as open as the sky, and especially en- 
dears him to an age which is strenuously realistic. 
Such evil as he saw he pitied without bestowing 
maudlin sentimentality upon it, and the sin was 
monstrous indeed which did not allow him to 
divide his resentment against it with some chari- 
table qualification. 

He was not an aristocrat. The most distin- 
guished of his progenitors, who came from York- 
shire, seems to have been his great-grandfather. 
Dr. Thomas Thackeray, once head-master at Har- 
row, a scholar of abundant attainments, a gentle- 
man of unalterable integrity, and a divine of much 
lovableness. His own father was a prosperous 
officer in the East India Company and secre- 
tary to the Board of Revenue at Calcutta, where 
Thackeray was born in 1811. A few years later 
his father died — exactly how many years we can 
not say, as three different biographers give three 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 9 

different dates — and when he was about seven 
years old, the boy was sent to relatives in England 
for education, his mother, who was very young, 
remaining in India. 

Charter-house, the noble foundation which had 
fostered Addison, Steele, and some of the most 
famous men in English history, was selected for 
him, and his life here has been reflected again and 
again in his books. A school-mate describes him 
as " a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy." But 
he was neither too gentle nor too timid to stand 
up in a fight and have his nose broken ; nor was 
he by industry or apparent ability above the aver- 
age of his fellows. In 1822 he was a tenth-form 
boy, and when seventeen years old he was on the 
first form, and had become a monitor of the school. 
In the election of orators for " founder's day " and 
poets for the Charter-house odes he was over- 
looked. No doubt he already had a sense of the 
puerile magniloquence of school-boy orations, odes, 
and valedictions ; the spirit of burlesque was strong 
within him, and he was more congenially em- 
ployed in mocking and satirizing those lofty effu- 
sions than in emulating them. 

His one predilection was for art. He wrote 



10 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

parodies in verse, and some of them were good ; 
but it was his facile pencil that gave him preemi- 
nence among the other boys, and this was busily- 
exercised for his own and their amusement with 
extraordinary fancy and humor. The margins of 
books and scraps of paper of all kinds were cov- 
ered with sketches, most of them caricatures, and 
it was a familiar thing at Charter-house *o see the 
artist surrounded by an admiring crowd of his 
school-fellows while he developed with grotesque 
extravagance and never-failing effect the outlines 
of some juvenile hero or notability of history. 
He was never serious : he treated history, poetry, 
and mythology with audacious levity. His in- 
spiration was burlesque, but it was the decent and 
honest burlesque of a playful boy. The graphic 
power of pictorial description that, later in life, he 
was so fond of recognizing in Cruikshank, is 
scarcely less conspicuous in those immature pro- 
ductions of his own. The variety and number of 
them, their simplicity and effectiveness, are all 
remarkable. 

The head-master of the school was severe, and, 
as Thackeray was very sensitive, it is supposed 
his school days were not very happy ones, despite 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. H 

his artistic exuberance. In his earlier books he 
always wrote of Charter-house as Slaughter-house 
and Smithfield, but, as he became famous, his 
memories of it were softened, and he spoke of it 
as Gray Friars, making it the scene of the most 
touching passage within our knowledge of liter- 
ature, the death of Colonel Newcome. 

His school days were relieved by vacations 
spent at Ottery St. Mary, where his mother had 
come to live with her second husband, and his 
life here, the persons he met, and the scenes around 
him, are reproduced in his account of the early 
adventures of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, in whose 
history Ottery St. Mary is changed to Clavering 
St. Mary, while Exeter is renamed Chatteris. 
Like Arthur, he v/rote story verses for the " poet's 
corner" of the village newspaper, and it is pos- 
sible that, with the license of the novelist, he has 
shifted on to the shoulders of Pendennis an esca- 
pade of his own when he describes Miss Fotherin- 
gay and her immortal father. He seems to have 
been indolent and fond of luxury, unagitated by 
any repressed ambitions, and placidly self-assured 
in a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, available 
on his majority. It was his pleasure to become 



12 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

an artist, not a necessity either from the urgency 
of his ambition or his pecuniary circumstances, 
and he applied himself accordingly. 

Leaving school, he went up to Trinity College, 
Cambridge, before he was eighteen years old, and 
became the class-mate of Tennyson, whose friend 
and admirer he continued to be through life, but 
he did not stay to graduate : in pursuit of art- 
knowledge and pleasure he sought the Continent, 
and passed most of his time between Paris and 
Weimar. At Paris he lived among Bohemians, 
and smoked pipes and supped with them ; he 
copied pictures in the Louvre, and made desperate 
efforts to be industrious. At Weimar he and 
some other English students were petted by the 
little Saxon Court. Thackeray attended balls in 
court dress, wearing the sword of Schiller, which 
he had recently acquired by purchase ; he made 
pictures for the children ; he loaned English 
books to the Grand Duchess, and chatted about 
English literature with her, and he had private 
audiences with Goethe. Twenty-five years after- 
ward the novelist wrote : " I think I have never 
seen a society more simple, charitable, courteous, 
gentlemanlike, than that of the dear little Saxon 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 13 

city where the good Schiller and the great Goethe 
lived and lie buried." These were pleasant, cloud- 
less days. The butterfly hovered among the 
studios of Rome, Antwerp, Brussels, Paris, and 
London. This young Englishman, with the large, 
mild, candid face and the well-set form of com- 
manding height, could choose his own society ; 
he was welcome in aristocratic drawing-rooms, 
and he was encomrade in the attics of the Latin 
quarter and the chambers of bachelor London. 
Through his portraiture of Clive Newcome and 
Philip Firmin he himself may be seen, his habits, 
and his inclinations. In 1832 he came into his 
fortune, and the world that had treated him ami- 
ably so far promised to be fair enough for him. 
He was in a position to follow his taste for art as 
he chose — and it was a taste rather than a passion, 
but in less than two years prosperity had vanished 
from him, and all his fortune had been dissipated, 
some, it is said, in cards, but the larger part in 
two unsuccessful newspaper ventures, which had 
been shared by his step -father. 

The jovial and enviable young Englishman, 
without care and with ample means, was no more. 
All at once Thackeray was brought face to face 



14 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

with the world in an aspect with which his Bohe- 
mian acquaintances were familiar, but which he 
had escaped through more fortunate circumstances. 
Bread and butter became an object in life, the 
means to obtain it a problem not to be solved by- 
looking into bakers' windows. He had made so 
little progress in his art studies that he could 
draw but little better than when he diverted his 
school-fellows at Charter-house with caricatures of 
the " Castle of Otranto " and whimsical illustra- 
tions of history. Had he not offered to make 
pictures for the serials of Charles Dickens, and 
been rejected ? The art that he loved most would 
not cherish her votary, and somewhere about 
1834, Thackeray, with none of the confidence 
that possesses many beginners in literature, and 
which is coldly and briefly dispelled in thousands, 
took up a pen, and with that wand set out to 
charm the world and reverse the fates that had 
been so unkind to him. 

If too much confidence leads the novice to 
defeat and chagrin, too little confidence is one of 
the greatest embarrassments that afflict the estab- 
lished literary man, and, if the latter is dependent 
on his work for his bread, tranquillity is only as- 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 15 

sured to him when he can invariably produce a 
certain number of words a day, up to a given 
standard, and sure of effect. When he has to 
wait for moods, and is uncertain of what he is 
doing ; when he is tremulously anticipating the 
unfavorable criticism of his publisher or the pub- 
lic ; when he is for ever contemplating the con- 
sequences of failure, that he will be unnerved for 
renewed effort, that this and the other bill can 
not be paid, it is naturally impossible for him to 
concentrate his mind on the task before him, and, 
therefore, impossible for him to do himself full 
justice in his work. 

From a business point of view the model lit- 
erary man is Mr. Anthony Trollope, who, by his 
own confession, can meet unfalteringly every pos- 
sible exigency of a periodical ; add a dean to a 
novel in which there may already be a bishop and 
a canon ; conjure up a couple of archbishops in 
consideration of an increase in the amount of a 
promised check ; reach a thrilling denouement at 
the end of any given number of words ; curtail, 
compress, or extend, as occasion may require, and, 
whether on sea or on shore, on the wing or in the 
comfortable quiet of his own library, write so 



16 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

many columns a day up to, if not above, a cer- 
tain standard. Any writer whose qualifications 
are similar may be happy and prosperous in the 
unhappiest and least lucrative of all the profes- 
sion : in securing a living they are certain, when 
genius without industry, method, and adaptability 
is starving to death. 

Thackeray was the opposite of Mr. Trollope, 
having neither confidence in himself, great indus- 
try, nor definite prevision as to his publisher's 
wants. He was always proposing something im- 
practicable, or doing something that was not quite 
what the editor desired. In the beginning of his 
literary life he experienced most of the vicissi- 
tudes that usually crush the unknown and over- 
burdened peddler of manuscripts. He was re- 
jected, he was "cut down." That style of his, 
with its colloquial "asides" and familiar apos- 
trophies, with its after-dinner garrulity, struck 
many as being an undesirable innovation, and did 
not become the ordinarily frigid and classic pages 
of "Fraser's." 

He wrote the "Great Hoggarty Diamond," 
one of the most humorous and faithful studies of 
English life in existence, and he was called upon 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 17 

to shorten it, having done which, he went away 
from the publisher's with several guineas fewer 
than he had expected. " The Fashionable Fax 
and Polite Annygoats of Charles James Yellow- 
plush, Esq.," with their extraordinary cacography, 
were more successful ; but Thackeray only worked 
under compulsion : he procrastinated until he 
could delay no more, and was constantly pursued 
by the specter of an unfulfilled engagement or a 
resolve uncast in an expected deed. Neverthe- 
less, he was prolific, as necessarily he had to be, 
having taken a young wife to himself. He wrote 
burlesques, ballads, the story of " Catharine," 
" Barry Lyndon," the " Paris " and " Irish Sketch 
Book," and many miscellaneous articles. He was 
often very short of money, and had to write when 
the brain was unwilling and the heart weary. 
The excellence of his burlesque, the incisiveness 
of his satire, and the sweetness of his humor were 
being recognized, however, and readers were be- 
coming impatient to find out the real personality 
concealed in Michael Angelo Titmarsh. 

His prospects were improving when he began 
" A Shabby Genteel Story " ; but there suddenly 
came upon him a harder blow than any he had 
2 



18 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

yet received. "A Shabby Genteel Story" was 
abruptly ended, and, when it was reprinted in 
some miscellanies, this touching prefix explained 
the conclusion : " It was my intention to complete 
the little story of which only the first part is 
here written. . . . The tale was interrupted at a 
sad period of the writer's own life. The colors 
are long since dry, the artist's hand is changed. 
It is best to leave the sketch as it was when first 
designed seventeen years ago. The memory of 
the past is renewed as he looks at it." His wife 
became insane, and he was left the father of three 
little girls— a husband without a wife. 

The effect of this great sorrow on his charac- 
ter, and its concurrence with a decisive change in 
his literary position, seem to form a natural divi- 
sion between his earlier and later life. So far we 
have seen him ; the son of a gentleman, at school 
and at college, out of which period came the sug- 
gestion and materials of Arthur Pendennis's 
youthful adventures, Dr. Birch's young friends, 
and many pictures of the historic foundation at 
Smithfield ; then as the fortunate young gentle- 
man of leisure, with a taste for art, in whose 
career we can trace the development of Philip 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 19 

Firnoin and Clive Newcome, his acquaintance 
with Gandish's, the creation of John James Rid- 
ley, and his genial intimacy with studio life in 
Paris, Rome, and London ; and, finally, our glance 
at his history has revealed him as the struggling 
literary man, always doing something good, earn- 
ing a respectable income, but failing to attain 
preeminence or to charm a larger public than that 
within the subscribing constituency of a few mag- 
azines — a period of difficulty and mortification to 
the writer, but one that has yielded us many a 
pleasant glimpse of life : Warrington in his cham- 
bers, Captain Shandon in " the Fleet," Bacon and 
Bungay, the publishers in "the Row," the mid- 
night carousings at the " Haunt " and the " Back 
Kitchen," and the famous first scenes in the 
" Newcomes." 

It is thus, synthetically, that Thackeray's life 
may best be viewed. The individuality of an 
author is not often completely concealed in his 
delineations, no matter how vivid his powers of 
imagination may be, nor how vigorous his con- 
ceptions. The features of the rogues who have 
swindled him in actual life reappear, modified or 
intensified, in his pictures of the blacklegs who 



20 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

cheat his heroes — though the circumstances and 
scenes, the complexion, stature, and manner, may 
be different, the ear-marks of the original are 
sure to crop out ; and the good people who have 
helped him on his way give shape to those who 
are beneficent among his characters. Perhaps 
Othello was a Blackfriars haberdasher, and Ham- 
let a boozy student from Oxford. That the great 
playwriter intended to incarnate in this one char- 
acter all the attributes of the fiercest jealousy, 
and that in casting about for a proper medium he 
chose the Moor, with his profound capacity for 
hate, and his strong sense of personal proprietor- 
ship in woman, as the most appropriate of all, is 
not an hypothesis inconsistent with the haber- 
dasher. What we mean to say is, that nearly all 
that comes out of every writer has to some ex- 
tent its genesis in his own life and surroundings ; 
that even with Othello or Hamlet the first thought 
of the creator may have been formed, the inspira- 
tion awakened, by some trivial but real circum- 
stance, which his genius has transmuted, built 
upon, and glorified. 

Thackeray, especially, has drawn upon the so- 
ciety with which he was personally acquainted 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 21 

for his material. The broad, good-natured face 
beams all over his pages ; his voice — ah, what a 
voice to have listened to ! — is audible, now in 
mild reproach, and then with a deep-hearted ap- 
peal to the better nature. In " Esmond," which, 
measured by established canons of literature, must 
be considered his most " artistic " work, he disap- 
pears in the scholarly Colonel, but in " Vanity 
Fair," "Pendennis," "Philip," and "The Virgin- 
ians,^' the gentle moralist is never absent from the 
company of actors. He sees through and through 
a man and his motives with extraordinary pene- 
tration, and he tells what he sees, and bases a hom- 
ily upon it. To say that he is not an imaginative 
writer would, of course, be absurd ; all his action 
is invented, and it fits his characters with such 
verisimilitude that there seems to be no fiction at 
all. Think of the scene between Esmond and 
the Duke of Hamilton ; again, of the scene be- 
tween young Castle wood, Esmond, and the Che- 
valier St. George ; again, of the scene in which 
Becky Sharp-Crawley admires her husband when 
he is giving Lord Steyne the chastisement which 
ruins her for life. If he had been simply a clever 
painter of "pen-pictures," he would be shelved 



22 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

now, and the spiders would have spun a net over 
the dead volumes ; but at the same time his ob- 
servation was exercised oftener than his imagina- 
tion : it is his perspicacity that strikes one most. 
The publication of " Vanity Fair," in monthly 
parts, began in February, 1847, and this marks 
the inauguration of the second period of Thack- 
eray's life. Dickens had already established him- 
self, and had won applause and fame, while Thack- 
eray had been plodding along as little more than 
a successful feuilletonist. But " Vanity Fair " 
decided his position ; it at once placed him among 
the first of novelists, and led him on to fortune. 
Two years later "Pendennis" appeared, and in 
1851 the author delivered a remunerative course 
of lectures on "The English Humorists," which 
he repeated in America. The incidents of this 
part of his life need not be mentioned here. All 
who met him liked him ; he was generous, grate- 
ful, and chivalrous. " Pendennis " was followed 
in 1852 by " Henry Esmond " ; and "The New- 
comes " appeared in 1855. A year later the author 
again visited the United States, delivering the 
lectures on " The Four Georges," which were as 
successful as the previous course ; and in 1857 he 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 23 

offered himself for the representation of Oxford 
in Parliament. He bore himself with extreme 
courtesy to his opponents ; his speeches were 
charmingly simple and to the point ; but he was 
defeated by a small majority. In 1857, also, 
the publication of "The Virginians" was be- 
gun, and in 1859 the " Cornhill Magazine " 
first appeared under his editorship, with a cir- 
culation of more than one hundred thousand 
copies. 

Thackeray was now a rich man, but he was a 
worn and weary one. Despite the brilliance of 
his success, he was always afraid that what was 
forthcoming from him would fail, and there is 
little doubt that this hesitation and despair pre- 
vented him from writing to the full of his ability. 
" He seems," as Mr. Trollope says, " to have been 
dreaming over some high flight, and then to have 
told himself, with a half -broken heart, that it was 
beyond his power to soar up into those bright re- 
gions." He was hypersensitive to criticism and 
full of apprehension. " My last book is not sell- 
ing well," he said of "Esmond." "Well," he 
added, " I suppose Harry is a prig " ; and, had 
some one told him that " Vanity Fair " was nar- 



24 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

row and bitter, he would have lain awake all 
night asking himself if that might not be true. 

No words can tell how much this generous 
soul suffered in his editorial capacity. There is a 
class of people who look upon an editor's office as 
a bureau of general relief — young widows with 
sixteen or more children, who send in manuscripts 
with a frank avowal that they are conscious of 
possessing no literary ability whatever, but that 
they feel sure this or that one will be accepted, as 
otherwise they and their little ones must starve ; 
there are farmer boys who write diagonally across 
brown wrapping-paper, and beg for favor as a 
means of acquiring an education ; there are thou- 
sands who have failed at everything else, but are 
sure they can write — some are pretentious and im- 
pudent, others modest and appealing, and with the 
latter it is particularly hard to deal. A great many 
arc vituperative, and look upon the editor as a des- 
pot installed to crush all rising genius. More than 
once, when Thackeray paid out of his own purse 
for articles which he knew he could not use, the 
writers reproached him for suppressing matter 
which surpassed his own. The work became un- 
endurable to him, and he gave it up. 



A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 25 

He wrote for the "Cornhill," "Philip," and 
" Lovel the Widower." " Denis Duval " was in- 
complete when he died. On Wednesday, Decem- 
ber 23, 1863, an old malady suddenly attacked 
him with great violence, and during the following 
night, while in bed and alone, he silently passed 
away. There is a bust of him in Westminster 
Abbey, but he is buried in Kensal Green Ceme- 
tery. Not long ago we made a pilgrimage to 
that quiet little graveyard in northwestern Lon- 
don. It was one of those soft, warm, English 
days when the wind can be heard whispering and 
shaking the leaves, but can scarcely be felt. A 
high brick wall incloses the ground, and within 
the shade of a neighboring tree we found one of 
the simplest tombstones in the place, inscribed 
with two dates and the name of William Make- 
peace Thackeray. It was a pleasure to find no 
more — no sonorous epitaph, no elaboration of 
granite or marble. The name and the memories 
it called forth were enough, and we fancy that to 
all who appreciate the simplicity of his life this 
memorial will seem most appropriate. Little can 
be added to the present stock of knowledge which 
we possess of this great man. These brief notes 



26 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 

seem superfluous : his beautiful life is in his works, 
and we shall have to live long and look far before 
we discover one fairly competent to measure it. 

William H. Rideing. 

New York, February, 1880. 



STKAY MOMENTS 

WITH 

TH A C KE RAY. 



HUMOR. 



THE AMENITIES OF A LITERARY CAREER. 

The drawbacks and penalties attendant upon 
the literary profession are taken into full account, 
as we well know, by literary men and their friends. 
Our poverty, hardships, and disappointments are 
set forth with great emphasis, and often with too 
great truth by those who speak of us ; but there 
are advantages belonging to our trade which are 
passed over, I think, by some of those who exer- 
cise it and describe it, and for which, in striking 
the balance of our accounts, we are not always 
duly thankful. We have no patron, so to speak 
— we sit in antechambers no more, waiting the 
present of a few guineas from my lord, in return 
for a fulsome dedication. We sell our wares to 
the book purveyor, between whom and us there 



28 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

is no greater obligation than between him and his 
paper-maker or printer. In the great towns in 
our country immense stores of books are pro- 
vided for us, with librarians to class them, kind 
attendants to wait upon us, and comfortable ap- 
pliances for study. We require scarce any capi- 
tal wherewith to exercise our trade. What other 
so-called learned profession is equally fortunate ? 
A doctor, for example, after carefully and expen- 
sively educating himself, must invest in house and 
furniture, horses, carriage, and men-servants, be- 
fore the public patient will think of calling him 
in. I am told that such gentlemen have to coax 
and wheedle dowagers, to humor hypochondriacs, 
to practice a score of little subsidiary arts in or- 
der to make that of healing profitable. How 
many, many hundreds of pounds has a barrister 
to sink upon his stock in trade before his returns 
are available? There are the costly charges of 
university education — the costly chambers in the 
inn of court — the clerk and his maintenance — the 
inevitable travels on circuit — certain expenses all 
to be defrayed before the possible client makes 
his appearance, and the chance of fame or compe- 
tency arrives. The prizes are great, to be sure, 
in the law, but what a prodigious sum the lottery- 
ticket costs ! If a man of letters can not win, 
neither does he risk so much. Let us speak of 
our trade as we find it, and not be too eager in 
calling out for public compassion. 



THE AMENITIES OF A LITERARY CAREER. 29 

The artists, for the most part, do not cry out 
their woes as loudly as some gentlemen of the lit- 
erary fraternity, and yet I think the life of many 
of them is harder, their chances even more preca- 
rious, and the conditions of their profession less 
independent and agreeable than ours. I have 

watched Smee, Esq., R. A., flattering and 

fawning, and at the same time boasting and swag- 
gering, poor fellow ! in order to secure a sitter. 
I have listened to a Manchester magnate talking 
about fine arts before one of J. J.'s pictures, assum- 
ing the airs of a painter, and laying down the most 
absurd laws respecting the art. I have seen poor 
Tomkins bowing a rich amateur through a private 
view, and noted the eager smiles on Tomkins's 
face at the amateur's slightest joke, the sickly twin- 
kle of hope in his eyes as Amateur stopped before 
his own picture. I have been ushered by Chip- 
stone's black servant through hall after hall, peo- 
pled with plaster gods and heroes, into Chipstone's 
own magnificent studio, where he sat longing 
vainly for an order, and justly dreading his land- 
lord's call for the rent. And, seeing how severely 
these gentlemen were taxed in their profession, I 
have been grateful for my own more fortunate 
one, which necessitates cringing to no patron ; 
which calls for no keeping up of appearances ; 
and which requires no stock in trade save the 
workman's industry, his best ability, and a dozen 
sheets of paper. — The JSFeiocomes. 



30 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 



THE TJRGEI^CT OF LOVE. 

Who does not know how ruthlessly women 
will tyrannize when they are let to domineer ? and 
who does not know how useless advice is ? I could 
give good counsel to my descendants, but I know 
they'll follow their own way, for all their grand- 
father's sermon. A man gets his own experience 
about women, and will take nobody's hearsay ; 
nor, indeed, is the young fellow worth a fig that 
would. 'Tis I that am in love with my mistress, 
not my old grandmother that counsels me ; 'tis I 
that have fixed the value of the thing I would 
have, and know the price I would pay for it. It 
may be worthless to you, but 'tis all my life to 
me. Had Esmond possessed the Great Mogul's 
crown and all his diamonds, or all the Duke of 
Marlborough's money, or all the ingots sunk at 
Vigo, he would have given them all for this 
woman. A fool he was, if you will ; but so is a 
sovereign a fool, that will give half a principality 
for a little crystal as big as a pigeon's egg, and 
called a diamond ; so is a wealthy nobleman a fool, 
that will face danger or death, and spend half his 
life, and all his tranquillity, caballing for a blue 
ribbon ; so is a Dutch merchant a fool, that hath 
been known to pay ten thousand crowns for a 
tulip. There's some particular prize we all of us 
value, and that every man of spirit will venture 
his life for. With this, it may be to achieve a 



THE BACK KITCHEN. 31 

great reputation for learning ; with that, to be a 
man of fashion, and the admiration of the town ; 
with another, to consummate a great work of art or 
poetry, and go to immortality that way ; and with 
another, for a certain time of his life, the sole 
object and aim is a woman. — Henry Esmond. 



THE BACK KITCHEN. 

We tap at a door in an old, old street in Soho : 
an old maid with a kind, comical face opens the 
door, and nods friendly, and says, " How do, sir ? 
ain't seen you this ever so long. How do, Mr. 
Noocom ? " " Who's here ? " " Most everybody's 
here." We pass by a little snug bar, in which a 
trim elderly lady is seated by a -great fire, on which 
boils an enormous kettle ; while two gentlemen 
are attacking a cold saddle of mutton and West 
India pickles ; hard by Mrs. Nokes, the landlady's 
elbow — with mutual bows — we recognize Hickson, 
the sculptor, and Morgan, intrepid Irish chieftain, 
chief of the reporters of the "Morning Press" 
newspaper. We pass through a passage into a 
back room, and are received with a roar of wel- 
come from a crowd of men, almost invisible in 
the smoke. 

" I am right glad to see thee, boy ! " cries a 
cheery voice (that will never troll a chorus more). 
" We spake anon of thy misfortune, gentle youth ! 
and that thy warriors of Assaye have charged the 



32 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

Academy in vain. Mayhap thou frightenedst the 
courtly school with barbarous visages of grisly 
war. Pendennife, thou dost wear a thirsty look ! 
Resplendent swell ! untwine thy choker white, 
and I will either stand a glass of grog, or thou 
shalt pay the like for me, my lad, and tell us of 
the fashionable world." Thus spake the brave old 
Tom Sarjent — also one of the " Press," one of the 
old boys, a good old scholar with a good old library 
of books, who had taken his seat any time these 
forty years by the chimney fire in this old Haunt: 
where painters, sculptors, men of letters, actors, 
used to congregate, passing pleasant hours in rough 
kindly communion, and many a day seeing the 
sunrise lighting the rosy street ere they parted, 
and Betsy put the useless lamp out, and closed the 
hospitable gates of the Haunt. 

The time is not very long since ; though to- 
day is so changed. As we think of it, the kind, 
familiar faces rise up, and we hear the pleasant 
voices and singing. There are they met, the 
honest, hearty companions. In the days when the 
Haunt was a haunt, stage-coaches were not yet 
quite over. Casinos were not invented ; clubs 
were rather rare luxuries ; there were sanded 
floors, triangular sawdust-boxes, pipes, and tavern 
parlors. Young Smith and Brown, from the Tem- 
ple, did not go from chambers to dine at the Poly- 
anthus, or the Megatherium, off potage a la Bisque, 
turbot au gratin, cotelettes a la Whatdyoucallem, 



THE BACK KITCHEN. 33 

and a pint of St. Emilion ; but ordered their beef- 
steak and pint of port from the "plump head- 
waiter at the Cock " ; did not disdain the pit of 
the theatre ; and for supper a homely refection 
at the tavern. How delightful are the suppers in 
Charles Lamb to read of even now ! The cards — 
the punch — the candles to be snuffed — the social 
oysters — the modest cheer ? Who ever snuffs a 
candle now ? What man has a domestic supper 
whose dinner-hour is eight o'clock ? Those little 
meetings, in the memory of many of us yet, are 
gone quite away into the past. Five-and-twenty 
years ago is a hundred years off — so much has our 
social life changed in those five lusters. James 
Boswell himself, were he to revisit London, would 
scarce venture to enter a tavern. He would find 
scarce a respectable companion to enter its doors 
with him. It is an institution as extinct as a hack- 
ney-coach. Many a grown man who peruses this 
historic page has never seen such a vehicle, and 
only heard of rum-punch as a drink which his an- 
cestors used to tipple. 

Cheery old Tom Sarjent is surrounded at the 
Haunt by a dozen of kind boon companions. They 
toil all day at their avocations of art, or letters, 
or laws, and here meet for a harmless night's rec- 
reation and converse. They talk of literature, 
or politics, or pictures, or plays ; socially banter 
one another over their cheap cups ; sing brave old 
songs sometimes when they are especially jolly ; 
3 



34 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

kindly ballads in praise of love ; and wine-famous 
maritime ditties in honor of old England. I fancy 
I hear Jack Brent's noble voice rolling out the sad 
generous refrain of " The Deserter," " Then for 
that reason and for a season we will be merry be- 
fore we go," or Michael Percy's clear tenor caroling 
the Irish chorus of " What's that to any one, 
whether or no ? " or Mark Wilder shouting his 
bottle song of "Garryowen na gloria." These 
songs were regarded with affection by the brave 
old frequenters of the Haunt. A gentleman's 
property in a song was considered sacred. It was 
respectfully asked for ; it was heard with more 
pleasure for being old. Honest Tom Sarjent ! 
how the times have changed since we saw thee ! 
I believe the present chief of the reporters of the 

newspaper (which responsible office Tom 

filled) goes to Parliament in his brougham, and 
dines with the ministers of the crov/n. 

Around Tom are seated grave Royal Acade- 
micians, rising gay Associates ; writers of other 
journals besides the "Pall Mall Gazette" ; a bar- 
rister, maybe, whose name will be famous some 
day ; a hewer of marble perhaps ; a surgeon 
whose patients have not come yet ; and one or 
two men about town, who like this queer assem- 
bly better than haunts much more splendid. Cap- 
tain Shandon has been here, and his jokes are 
preserved in the tradition of the place. Owlet, 
the philosopher, came once, and tried, as his wont 



LONDON STUDIOS. 35 

is, to lecture ; but his metaphysics were beaten 
down by a storm of banter. Slatter, who gave 

himself such airs because he wrote in the 

Keview, tried to air himself at the Haunt, but 
was choked by the smoke, and silenced by the 
unanimous poohpoohing of the assembly. Dick 
Walker, who rebelled secretly at Sarjent's author- 
ity, once thought to give himself consequence by 
bringing a young lord from the Blue Posts, but he 
was so unmercifully " chaffed " by Tom, that even 
the young lord laughed at him. His lordship had 
been heard to say he had been taken to a monsus 
queeah place, queeah set of folks, in a tap some- 
where, though he went away quite delighted with 
Tom's affability ; but he never came again. He 
could not find the place probably. You might 
pass the Haunt in the daytime, and not know it 
in the least. "I believe," said Charley Ormond 
(A. R. A. he was then), "I believe in the day 
there's no place at all ; and when Betsy turns the 
gas off at the door-lamp, as we go away, the whole 
thing vanishes — the door, the house, the bar, the 
Haunt, Betsy, the beer-boy, Mrs. Nokes, and all." 
It has vanished — it is to be found no more — nei- 
ther by night nor by day — unless the ghosts of 
good fellows still haunt it. — The Neic comes. 

LONDON STUDIOS. 

British art either finds her peculiar nourish- 
ment in melancholy, and loves to fix her abode 



36 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

in desert places, or it may be her purse is but 
slenderly furnished, and she is forced to put up 
with accommodations rejected by more prosperous 
callings. Some of the most dismal quarters of 
the town are colonized by her disciples and pro- 
fessors. In walking through streets which may 
have been gay and polite when ladies' chairmen 
jostled each other on the pavement, and link-boys 
with their torches lighted the beaux over the 
mud, who has not remarked the artist's invasion 
of those regions once devoted to fashion and gay- 
ety? Center windows of drawing-rooms are en- 
larged so as to reach up into bedrooms — bedrooms 
where Lady Betty has had her hair powdered, 
and where the painter's north-light now takes 
possession of the place which her toilet-table oc- 
cupied a hundred years ago. There are degrees 
in decadence ; after the Fashion chooses to emi- 
grate, and retreats from Soho or Bloomsbury, let 
us say, to Cavendish Square, physicians come and 
occupy the vacant houses, which still have a re- 
spectable look, the windows being cleaned, and 
the knockers and plates kept bright, and the doc- 
tor's carriage rolling round the square, almost as 
fine as the countess's, which has whisked away 
her ladyship to other regions. A boarding-house 
mayhap succeeds the physician, who has followed 
after his sick folks into the new country ; and 
then Dick Tin to comes with his dingy brass plate, 
and breaks in his north window, and sets up his 



LONDON STUDIOS. 37 

sitters' throne. I love his honest mustache and 
jaunty velvet. jacket ; his queer figure, his queer 
vanities, and his kind heart. Why should he not 
suffer his ruddy ringlets to fall over his shirt col- 
lar? Why should he deny himself his velvet? 
It is but a kind of fustian that cost him eighteen- 
pence a yard. He is naturally what he is, and 
breaks out into costume as spontaneously as a 
bird sings, or a bulb bears a tulip. And as Dick, 
under yon terrific appearance of waving cloak, 
bris-tling beard, and shadowy sombrero, is a good, 
kindly, simple creature, got up at a very cheap 
rate, so his life is consistent with his dress ; he 
gives his genius a darkling swagger, and a roman- 
tic envelope, which, being removed, you find, not 
a bravo, but a kind, chirping soul ; not a moody 
poet, avoiding mankind for the better company of 
his own great thoughts, but a jolly little chap 
who has an aptitude for joainting brocade gowns, 
a bit of armor (with figures inside them), or trees 
and cattle, or gondolas and buildings, or what 
not ; an instinct for the picturesque, which ex- 
hibits itself in his works and outwardly on his 
person ; beyond this, a gentle creature, loving his 
friends, his cups, feasts, merrymakings, and all 
good things. The kindest folks alive I have 
found among those scowling whiskeradoes. They 
open oysters with their yataghans, toast muffins 
on their rapiers, and fill their Venice glasses with 
half-and-half. If they have money in their lean 



38 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

purses, be sure they have a friend to share it. 
What innocent gayety, what jovial suppers on 
threadbare cloths, and wonderful songs after ; 
what pathos, merriment, humor does not a man 
enjoy who frequents their company ! — The Neic- 
comes. 

ON woman's love. 

The old French satirist avers that in a love 
affair there is usually one person who loves, and 
the other, qui se laisse aimer ; it is only in later 
days, perhaps, when the treasures of love are 
spent, and the kind hand cold which ministered 
them, that we remember how tender it was, how 
soft to soothe, how eager to shield, how ready to 
support and caress. The ears may no longer 
hear, which would have received our w^ords of 
thanks so delightedly. Let us hope those fruits 
of love, though tardy, are yet not all too late ; 
and, though we bring our tribute of reverence 
and gratitude it may be to a gravestone, there is 
an acceptance even there for the stricken heart's 
oblation of fond remorse, contrite memories, and 
pious tears. — The Nev^comes. 

AKTIST LIFE IN EOME. 

When Clive Newcome . comes to be old, no 
doubt he will remember his Roman days as 
among the happiest which fate ever awarded him. 
The simplicity of the student's life there, the 



ARTIST LIFE IN ROME. 89 

greatness and friendly splendor of tlie scenes sur- 
rounding him, the delightful nature of the occu- 
pation in which he is engaged, the pleasant compa- 
ny of comrades, inspired by a like pleasure over a 
similar calling, the labor, the meditation, the holi- 
day, and the kindly feast afterward, should make 
the art-students the happiest of youth, did they 
but know their good fortune. Their work is for 
the most part delightfully easy. It does not ex- 
ercise the brain too much, but gently occupies it, 
and with a subject most agreeable to the scholar. 
The mere poetic flame, or jet of invention, needs 
to be lighted up but very seldom, namely, when 
the young painter is devising his subject, or set- 
tling the composition thereof. The posing of fig- 
ures and drapery ; the dexterous copying of the 
line ; the artful processes of cross-hatching, of 
stumping, of laying on lights, and what not ; the 
arrangement of color, and the pleasing operation 
of glazing and the like, are labors for the most 
part merely manual. These, with the smoking of 
a proper number of pipes, carry the student 
through his day's work. If you pass his door, you 
will very probably hear him singing at his easel. 
I should like to know what young lawyer, mathe- 
matician, or divinity scliolar, can sing over his 
volumes, and at the same time advance with his 
labor? In every city where art is practiced, 
there are old gentlemen who never touched a 
pencil in their lives, but find the occupation and 



40 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

company of artists so agreeable that they are 
never out of the studios ; follow one generation 
of painters after another ; sit by with perfect con- 
tentment while Jack is drawing his pifferaro, or 
Tom designing his cartoon, and years afterward, 
when Jack is established in Newman Street, and 
Tom a Royal Academician, shall still be found in 
their rooms, occupied now by fresh painters and 
pictures, telling the youngsters, their successors, 
what glorious fellows Jack and Tom were. A 
poet must retire to privy places and meditate his 
rhymes in secret ; a painter can practice his trade 
in the company of friends. Your splendid chef 
cVecole, a Kubens or a Horace Vernet, may sit 
with a secretary reading to him ; a troop of 
admiring scholars watching the master's hand ; 
or a company of court ladies and gentlemen (to 
whom he addresses a few kind words now and 
again) looking on admiringly ; while the humblest 
painter, be he ever so poor, may have a friend 
watching at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by 
with her work in her lap, and with fond smiles or 
talk or silence cheering his labor. 

Among all ranks and degrees of painters as- 
sembled at Rome, Mr. Clive found companions 
and friends. The cleverest man was not the best 
artist very often : the ablest artist not the best 
critic nor the best companion. Many a man 
could give no account of the faculty within him, 
but achieved success because he could not help it ; 



ARTIST LIFE IN ROME. 41 

and did, in an hour and without effort, that which 
another could not effect with half a life's labor. 
There were young sculptors who had never read 
a line of Homer, who took on themselves never- 
theless to interpret and continue the heroic Greek 
art. There were young painters with the strong- 
est natural taste for low humor, comic singing, 
and Cider-Cellar jollifications, who would imitate 
nothing under Michael Angelo, and whose can- 
vases teemed with tremendous allegories of fates, 
furies, genii of death and battle. There were long- 
haired lads who fancied the sublime lay in the 
Peruginesque manner, and depicted saintly per- 
sonages with crisp draperies, crude colors, and 
haloes of gold-leaf. Our friend marked all these 
practitioners of art with their various oddities 
and tastes, and was welcomed in the ateliers of 
all of them, from the grave dons and seniors, the 
senators of the French and English Academy, 
down to the jovial students who railed at the 
elders over their cheap cups at the Lepre. What 
a gallant, starving, generous, kindly life many of 
them led ! What fun in their grotesque airs, 
what friendship and gentleness in their poverty ! 
How splendidly Carlo talked of the marquis his 
cousin, and the duke his intimate friend ! How 
great Federigo was on the subject of his wrongs, 
from the Academy at home, a pack of tradesmen, 
who could not understand high art, and who had 
never seen a good picture ! With what haughti- 



42 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

ness Augusto swaggered about at Sir Jolin's 
soirees, thougli he was known to have borrowed 
Fernando's coat, and Luigi's dress-boots ! If one 
or the other was ill, how nobly and generously 
his companions flocked to comfort him, took turns 
to nurse the sick man through nights of fever, 
contributed out of their slender means to help 
him through his difficulty. Max, who loves fine 
dresses and the carnival so, gave up a costume 
and a carriage so as to help Paul. Paul, when he 
sold his picture (through the agency of Pietro, 
with whom he had quarreled, and who recom- 
mended him to a patron), gave a third of the 
money back to Max, and took another third por- 
tion to Lazaro, with his poor wife and children, 
who had not got a single order all that winter — 
and so the story went on. I have heard Clive 
tell of two noble young Americans who came to 
Europe to study their art ; of whom the one fell 
sick while the other supported his penniless com- 
rade, and out of sixpence a day absolutely kept 
but a penny for himself, giving the rest to his 
sick companion. — The N'eiccomes. 

A FAMILIAR MYSTERY. 

I suppose there is no man in this Vanity Fair 
of ours so little observant as not to think some- 
times about the worldly affairs of his acquaint- 
ances, or so extremely charitable as not to wonder 
how his neighbor Jones, or his neighbor Smith 



A FAMILIAR MYSTERY. 43 

can make both ends meet at the end of the year. 
With the utmost regard for the family, for in- 
stance (for I dine with them twice or thrice in 
the season), I can not but own that the appearance 
of the Jenkinses in the park, in the large barouche 
with grenadier-footman, will surprise and mystify 
me to my dying day : for though I know the 
equipage is only jobbed, and all the Jenkins peo- 
ple are on board-wages, yet those three men and 
the carriage must represent an expense of six hun- 
dred a. year at the very least ; and then there are 
the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, the 
prize governess and masters for the girls, the trip 
abroad, or to Eastbourne or Worthing in the au- 
tumn, the annual ball with a supper from Gunter's 
(who, by the way, supplies most of the first-rate 
dinners which J. gives, as I know very well, hav- 
ing been invited to one of them to fill a vacant 
place, when I saw at once that these repasts are 
very superior to the common run of entertain- 
ments for which the humbler sort of J.'s acquain- 
tances get cards) — who, I say with the most good- 
natured feelings in the world, can help wondering 
how the Jenkinses make out matters ? What is 
Jenkins ? We all know — Commissioner of Tape 
and Sealing Wax Ofiice, with £1,200 a year for 
a salary. Had his wife a private fortune ? Pooh ! 
— Miss Flint — one of eleven children of a small 
squire in Buckinghamshire. All she ever gets 
from her family is a turkey at Christmas, in ex- 



44 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

change for which she has to board two or three 
of her sisters in the off season ; and lodge and 
feed her brothers when they come to town. How 
does Jenkins balance his income ? I say, as every 
friend of his must say, How is it that he has not 
been outlawed long since ; and that he ever came 
back (as he did to the surprise of everybody) last 
year from Boulogne ? *' J." is here introduced to 
personify the world in general — the Mrs. Grundy 
of each respected reader's private circle — every 
one of whom can point to some families of his ac- 
quaintance who live nobody knows how. Many 
a glass of wine have we all of us drunk, I have 
very little doubt, hob-and-nobbing with the hos- 
pitable giver, and wondering how the deuce he 
paid for it. — Vanity Fair. 

THE BADEN OP OLD. 

Besides roulette and trente et quarante, a 
number of amusing games are played at Baden 
which are not performed, so to speak, sur table. 
These little diversions and jeux de societe can go 
on anywhere ; in an alley in the park ; in a picnic 
to this old schloss, or that pretty hunting-lodge ; 
at a tea-table in a lodging-house or hotel ; in a 
ball at the Redoute ; in the play-rooms, behind 
the backs of the gamblers, whose eyes are only 
cast upon rakes and rouleaux, and red and black ; 
or on the broad walk in front of the Conversation 
Rooms, where thousands of people are drinking 



THE BADEN OF OLD. 45 

and chattering, lounging and smoking, while the 
Austrian brass band, in the little music pavilion, 
plays the most delightful mazurkas and waltzes. 
Here the widow plays her black suit, and sets her 
bright eye on the rich bachelor, elderly or young 
as may be. Here the artful practitioner, who has 
dealt in a thousand such games, engages the young 
simpleton with more money than wit ; and, know- 
ing his weakness and her skill, we may safely take 
the odds, and back rouge et couleur to win. Here 
mamma, not having money, perhaps, but metal 
more attractive, stakes her virgin daughter against 
Count Fettacker's forests and meadows ; or Lord 
Lackland plays his coronet, of which the jewels 
have long since been in pawn, against Miss Bags's 
three per cents. And so two or three funny little 
games were going on at Baden among our imme- 
diate acquaintance ; besides that vulgar sport 
round the green-table, at which the mob, with 
whom we have little to do, was elbowing each 
other. A hint of these domestic prolusions has 
been given to the reader in the foregoing extract 
from Miss Ethel Newcome's letter ; likewise some 
passions have been in play, of which a modest 
young English maiden could not be aware. Do 
not, however, let us be too prematurely proud of 
our virtue. That tariff of British virtue is won- 
derfully organized. Heaven help the society 
which made its laws ! Gnats are shut out of its 
ports, or not admitted without scrutiny and re- 



46 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

pugnance, while herds of camels are let in. The 
law professes to exclude some goods (or bads, shall 
we call them?) — well, some articles of baggage, 
which are yet smuggled openly under the eyes 
of winking officers, and worn every day without 
shame. Shame ! AYhat is shame ? Virtue is 
very often shameful according to the English so- 
cial constitution, and shame honorable. Truth, 
if yours happens to differ from your neighbor's, 
provokes your friend's coldness, your mother's 
tears, the world's persecution. Love is not to be 
dealt in, save under restrictions which kill its sweet, 
healthy, free commerce. Sin in man is so light 
that scarce the fine of a penny is imposed ; while 
for woman it is so heavy that no repentance can 
wash it out. Ah ! yes ; all stories are old. You 
proud matrons in your Mayfair markets, have 
you never seen a virgin sold, or sold one ? Have 
you never heard of a poor wayfarer fallen among 
robbers, and not a Pharisee to help him? of a 
poor woman fallen more sadly yet, abject in re- 
pentance and tears, and a crowd to stone her ? I 
pace this broad Baden walk as the sunset is gild- 
ing the hills round about, as the orchestra blows 
its merry tunes, as the happy children laugh and 
sport in the alleys, as the lamps of the gambling 
palace are lighted up, as the throngs of pleasure- 
hunters stroll, and smoke, and flirt, and hum ; and 
wonder, sometimes, is it the sinners who are the 
most sinful ? Is it poor Prodigal yonder among 



THE WILDNESS OF YOUTH. 47 

the bad company, calling black and red, and toss- 
ing the Champagne ; or brother Straightlace that 
grudges his repentance? Is it downcast Hagar 
that slinks away with poor little Ishmael in her 
hand ; or bitter old virtuous Sarah, who scowls at 
her from my demure Lord Abraham's arm? — 
The Newcomes. 

THE WILDNESS OF YOUTH. 

When we read in the fairy stories that the 
King and Queen, who lived once upon a time, 
built a castle of steel, defended by moats and 
sentinels innumerable, in which they place their 
darling only child, the Prince or Princess, whose 
birth has blest them after so many years of mar- 
riage, and whose christening feast has been inter- 
rupted by the cantankerous humor of that noto- 
rious old fairy who always persists in coming, 
although she has not received any invitation to 
the baptismal ceremony ; when Prince Prettyman 
is locked up in the steel tower, provided only with 
the most wholesome food, the most edifying edu- 
cational works, and the most venerable old tutor 
to instruct and to bore him, we knew, as a matter 
of course, that the steel bolts and brazen bars will 
one day be of no avail, the old tutor will go off 
in a doze, and the moats and drawbridges will 
either be passed by his Royal Highness's implaca- 
ble enemies, or crossed by the young scapegrace 
himself, who is determined to outwit his guar- 



48 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

dians and see the wicked world. The old King 
and Queen always come in and find the chambers 
empty, the saucy heir-apparent flown, the porters 
and sentinels drunk, the ancient tutor asleep ; 
they tear their venerable wigs in anguish, they 
kick the major-domo down stairs, they turn the 
duenna out of doors, the toothless old dragon. 
There is no resisting fate. The Princess will slip 
out of window by the rope-ladder ; the Prince 
be off to pursue his pleasures, and sow his wild 
oats at the appointed season. How many of our 
English princes have been coddled at home by 
their fond papas and mammas, walled up in in- 
accessible castles, with a tutor and a library, 
guarded by cordons of sentinels, sermoners, old 
aunts, old women from the world without, and 
have nevertheless escaped from all the guardians, 
and astonished the world by their extravagance 
and their frolics. What a wild rogue was that 
Prince Harry, son of the austere sovereign who 
robbed Richard the Second of his crown — the 
youth who took purses on Gadshill, frequented 
Eastcheap taverns with Colonel Falstaff and 
worse company, and boxed Chief Justice Gas- 
coigne's ears. What must have been the vener- 
able Queen Charlotte's state of mind when she 
heard of the courses of her beautiful young 
Prince ; of his punting at gambling-tables ; of 
his dealings with horse jockeys ; of his awful do- 
ings with Perdita ? Besides instances taken from 



THE WILDNESS OF YOUTH. 49 

our Royal Family, could we not draw examples 
from our respected nobility? There was that 
young Lord Warwick, Mr. Addison's step-son. 
We know that his mother was severe, and his 
step-father a most eloquent moralist, yet the 
young gentleman's career was shocking, posi- 
tively shocking. He boxed the watch ; he fud- 
dled himself at taverns ; he was no better than a 
Mohock. The chronicles of that day contain ac- 
counts of many a mad prank which he played, as 
we have legends of a still earlier date of the law- 
less freaks of the wild Prince and Poins. Our 
people have never looked very unkindly on these 
frolics. A young nobleman full of life and spirits, 
generous of his money, jovial in his humor, ready 
with his sword, frank, handsome, prodigal, cou- 
rageous, always finds favor. Young Scapegrace 
rides a steeple-chase or beats a bargeman, and the 
crowd applaud him. Sages and seniors shake 
their heads, and look at him not unkindly ; even 
stern old female moralists are disarmed at the 
sight of youth, and gallantry, and beauty. I 
know very well that Charles Surface is a sad 
dog, and Tom Jones no better than he should 
be ; but, in spite of such critics as Dr. Johnson 
and Colonel Newcome, most of us have a sneak- 
ing regard for honest Tom, and hope Sophia will 
be happy, and Tom will end well at last. — The 
Newcomes. 
4 



50 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 



ON EEVEKSES IN LIFE. 

If the gracious reader has had losses in life, 
losses not so bad as to cause absolute want, or 
inflict upon him or her the bodily injury of starva- 
tion, let him confess that the evils of this pov- 
erty are by no means so great as his timorous 
fancy depicted. Say your money has been in- 
vested in West Diddlesex bonds, or other luckless 
speculations — the news of the smash comes ; you 
pay your outlying bills with the balance at the 
banker's ; you assemble your family and make 
them a fine speech ; the wife of your bosom goes 
round and embraces the sons and daughters seria- 
tim ; nestling in your own waistcoat finally, in 
possession of which, she says (with tender tears 
and fond quotations from Holy Writ, God bless 
her !), and of the darlings round about, lies all 
her worldly treasure ; the weeping servants are 
dismissed, their wages paid in full, and with a 
present of prayer-and hymn-books from their mis- 
tress ; your elegant house in Haiiey Street is to 
let, and you subside into lodgings in Pentonville, 
or Kensington, or Brompton. How unlike the 
mansion where you paid taxes and distributed 
elegant hospitality for so many years ! 

You subside into lodgings, I say, and you find 
yourself very tolerably comfortable. I am not 
sure that in her heart your wife is not happier 
than ill what she calls her happy days. She will 



ON REVERSES IN LIFE. 51 

be somebody hereafter : she was nobody in Har- 
ley Street : that is, everybody else in her visiting- 
book, take the names all round, was as good as 
she. They had the very same entrees, plated 
ware, men to wait, etc., at all the houses Avhere 
you visited in the street. Your candlesticks 
might be handsomer (and indeed they had a very 
fine effect upon the dinner-table), but then Mr. 
Jones's silver (or electro-plated) dishes were much 
finer. You had more carriages at your door on 
the evening of your delightful soirees than Mrs. 
Brown (there is no phrase more elegant, and to 
my taste, than that in which people are described 
as " seeing a great deal of carriage company ") ; 
but yet Mrs. Brown, from the circumstance of 
her being a baronet's niece, took precedence of 
your dear wife at most tables. Hence the latter 
charming woman's scorn at the British baronetcy, 
and her many jokes at the order. In a word, and 
in the height of your social prosperity, there was 
always a lurking dissatisfaction, and a something 
bitter, in the midst of the fountain of delights at 
which you were permitted to drink. 

There is no good (unless your taste is that way) 
in living in a society where you are merely the 
equal of everybody else. Many people give them- 
selves extreme pains to frequent company where 
all around them are their superiors, and where, do 
what you will, you must be subject to continual 
mortification — (as, for instance, when Marchioness 



52 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

X forgets you, and jou can't help thinking 

that she cuts you on purpose ; when Duchess 

Z passes by in her diamonds, etc.). The true 

pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors. Be 
the cock of your village ; the queen of your co- 
terie ; and, besides very great persons, the people 
whom Fate has specially endowed with this kind- 
ly consolation, are those who have seen what are 
called better days — those who have had losses. I 
am like Caesar, and of a noble mind : if I can not 
be first in Piccadilly, let me try Hatton Garden, 
and see whether I can not lead the ton there. If 
I can not take the lead at White's or the Travel- 
er's, let me be president of the Jolly Sandboys at 
the Bag of Nails, and blackball everybody who 
does not pay me honor. If my darling Bessy 
can not go out of a drawing-room until a baron- 
et's niece (ha ! ha ! a baronet's niece, forsooth !) 
has walked before her, let us frequent company 
where we shall be the first ; and how can we be 
the first unless we select our inferiors for our asso- 
ciates? This kind of pleasure is to be had by 
almost everybody, and at scarce any cost. With 
a shilling's worth of tea and muffins you can get 
as much adulation and respect as many people 
can not purchase with a thousand pounds' worth 
of plate and profusion, hired footmen, turning 
their houses topsy-turvy, and suppers from Gun- 
ter's. Adulation ! — why, the people who come to 
you give as good parties as you do. Respect ! — 



ON CONTEMPLATING PERSONS IN LOVE. 53 

the very menials, who wait behind your supper- 
table, waited at a duke's yesterday, and actually 
patronize you ! Oh, you silly spendthrift ! you 
can buy flattery for twopence, and you spend ever 
so much money in entertaining your equals and 
betters, and nobody admires you! — The Mewcomes. 

ON CONTEMPLATING PERSONS IN LOVE. 

For a while, at least, I think almost every man 
or woman is interesting when in love. If you 
know, of two or three such affairs going on in any 
soiree to which you may be invited — is not the 
party straightway amusing ? Yonder goes Augus- 
tus Tomkins, working his way through the rooms 
to that far corner where demure Miss Hopkins is 
seated, to whom the stupid, grinning Bumpkins 
thinks he is making himself agreeable. Yonder 
sits Miss Fanny distraite^ and yet trying to smile 
as the captain is talking his folly, the parson his 
glib compliments. And see, her face lights up all 
of a sudden : her eyes beam with delight at the 
captain's stories, and at that delightful young 
clergyman likewise. It is because Augustus has 
appeared ; their eyes only meet for one semi- 
second, but that is enough for Miss Fanny. Go 
on, captain, with your twaddle ! Proceed, my 
reverend friend, with your smirking common- 
places ! In the last two minutes the world has 
changed for Miss Fanny. That moment has come 
for which she has been fidgeting and longing and 



54 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

scheming all day ! Hoav different an interest, I 
say, has a meeting of people for a philosopher 
who knows of a few such little secrets, to that 
which your vulgar looker-on feels, who comes but 
to eat the ices, and stare at the ladies' dresses and 
beauty ! There are two frames of mind under 
which London society is bearable to a man — to be 
an actor in one of those sentimental performances 
above hinted at : or to be a spectator and watch 
it. But as for the mere dessus de cartes — would 
not an armchair and the dullest of books be bet- 
ter than that dull game ? — The Nevjcomes. 

THE WORLD NOT HEARTLESS. 

Some folks say the world is heartless : he who 
says so either prates commonplaces (the most 
likely and charitable suggestion), or is heartless 
himself, or is most singular and unfortunate in 
having made no friends. Many such a reasonable 
mortal can not have : our nature, I think, not 
sufficing for that sort of polygamy. How many 
persons would you have to deplore your death ; 
or whose death would you wish to deplore? 
Could our hearts let in such a harem of dear 
friendships, the mere changes and recurrences of 
grief and mourning would be intolerable, and tax 
our lives beyond their value. In a word, we 
carry our own burden in the world ; push and 
struggle along on our own affairs ; are pinched 
by our own shoes — though heaven forbid we 



ON THE PROSAIC IN LIFE. 55 

should not stop and forget ourselves sometimes, 
when a friend cries out in his distress, or we can 
help a poor stricken wanderer in his way. — The 

N'ewcomes. 

ON THE PEOSAIC IN LIFE. 

Worthy mammas of families — if you do not 
like to have your daughters told that bad hus- 
bands will make bad wives ; that marriages begun 
in indifference make home unhappy ; that men 
whom girls are brought to swear to love and 
honor are sometimes false, selfish, and cruel, and 
that women forget the oaths which they have 
been made to swear — if you will not hear of this, 
ladies, close the book, and send for some other. 
Banish the newspaper out of your houses, and 
shut your eyes to the truth, the awful truth of 
life and sin. Is the world made of Jennies and 
Jessamies ; and passion the play of school-boys 
and school-girls, scribbling valentines and inter- 
changing lollipops ? Is life all over when Jenny 
and Jessamy are married ; and are there no sub- 
sequent trials, griefs, wars, bitter heart-pangs, 
dreadful temptations, defeats, remorses, sufferings 
to bear, and dangers to overcome ? As you and 
I, friend, kneel with our children round about us, 
prostrate before the Father of us all, and asking 
mercy for miserable sinners, are the young ones 
to suppose the words are mere form, and don't 
apply to us ? to some outcasts in the free seats 
probably, or those naughty boys playing in the 



56 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

churchyard ? Are they not to know that we err, 
too, and pray with all our hearts to be rescued 
from temptation ? If such a knowledge is wrong 
for them, send them to church apart. Go you 
and worship in private : or, if not too proud, 
kneel humbly in the midst of them, owning your 
wrong, and praying Heaven to be merciful to you, 
a sinner. — The Newcomes. 

THE CEEATURES OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 

Do we know ourselves, or what good or evil 
circumstances may bring from us? Did Cain 
know, as he and his younger brother played round 
his mother's knee, that the little hand which 
caressed Abel should one day grow larger, and 
seize a brand to slay him ? Thrice fortunate he, 
to whom circumstance is made easy : whom fate 
visits with gentle trial, and kindly Heaven keej^s 
out of temptation. — The Neiocomes. 

A NOTE. 

What is sheer hate seems to the individual 
entertaining the sentiment so like indignant vir- 
tue, that he often indulges in the propensity to the 
full, nay, lauds himself for the exercise of it. — 

The N'eiocomes. 

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTEE. 

Fortune, good or ill, as I take it, does not 
change men and women. It but develops their 



FOUNDER'S DAY AT CHARTER-HOUSE. 57 

characters. As there are a thousand thoughts 
lying within a man that he does not know till he 
takes up the pen to write, so the heart is a secret 
even to hira (or her) who has it in his own breast. 
Who hath not found himself surprised into re- 
venge, or action, or passion for good or evil ; 
whereof the seeds lay within him, latent and un- 
suspected until the occasion called them forth ? — 
Henry Esmond. 

founder's day at charter-house. 

Tte custom of the school is, that on the 12th 
of December, the Founder's Day, the head gown- 
boy shall recite a Latin oration, in praise Funda- 
toris N'ostri, and upon other subjects ; and a 
goodly company of old Cistercians is generally 
brought together to attend this oration : after 
which we go to chapel and hear a sermon ; after 
which we adjourn to a great dinner, where old 
condisciples meet, old toasts are given, and speech- 
es are made. Before marching from the oration- 
hall to chapel, the stewards of the day's dinner, 
according to old-fashioned rite, have wands put 
into their hands, walk to church at the head -of 
the procession, and sit there in places of honor. 
The boys are already in their seats, with smug, 
fresh faces, and shining white collars ; the old 
black-gowned pensioners are on their benches ; 
the chapel is lighted, and Founder's Tomb, with 
its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, dar- 



58 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

kles and slimes witli the most wonderful shadows 
and lights. There he lies, Fundator Noster, in 
his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examina- 
tion Day. We oldsters, be we ever so old, be- 
come boys again as we look at that familiar old 
tomb, and think how the seats are altered since 
we were here, and how the doctor — not the pres- 
ent doctor, the doctor of our time — used to sit 
yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten us 
shuddering boys, on whom it lighted ; and how 
the boy next us loould kick our shins dui'ing ser- 
vice time, and how the monitor would cane us 
afterward because our shins were kicked. Yon- 
der sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about 
home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some 
threescore old gentlemen, pensioners of the hos- 
pital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. 
You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight — 
the old reverend black-gowns. Is Codd Ajax 
alive, you wonder ? — the Cistercian lads called 
these old gentlemen Codds, I know not where- 
fore — but is old Codd Ajax alive, I wonder ? or 
Codd Soldier ? or kind old Codd Gentleman, or 
has the grave closed over them? A plenty of 
candles lights up this chapel, and this scene of 
age and youth, and early memories, and pompous 
death. How solemn the well-remembered pray- 
ers are, here uttered again in the place where in 
childhood we used to hear them ! How beautiful 
and decorous the rite ; how noble the ancient 



THE OLD INNS OF COURT. 59 

words of the supplications which the priest utters, 
and to which generations of fresh children and 
troops of by-gone seniors have cried Amen ! un- 
der those arches ! The service for Founder's 
Day is a special one ; one of the psalms selected 
being the thirty-seventh, and we hear — 

" 23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the 
Lord ; and he delighteth in his way. 

"24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast 
down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. 

*' 25. I have been young, and now am old ; yet have 
I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging 
bread." 

As we came to this verse, I chanced to look 
up from my book toward the swarm of black- 
coated pensioners ; and among them — among 
them — sat Thomas ]!^ewcome. — The JVeiccomes. 

THE OLD INNS OF COURT. 

Colleges, schools, and inns of court, still have 
some respect for antiquity, and maintain a great 
number of the customs and institutions of our 
ancestors, with which those persons who do not 
particularly regard their forefathers, or perhaps 
are not very well acquainted with them, have 
long since done away. A well-ordained work- 
house or prison is much better pro\'ided with the 
appliances of health, comfort, and cleanliness, 
than a respectable Foundation school, a venerable 
College, or a learned Inn. In the latter place of 



60 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

residence men are contented to sleep in dingy- 
closets, and to pay for the sitting-room and the 
cupboard, which is their dormitory, the price of a 
good villa and garden in the suburbs, or of a 
roomy house in the neglected squares of the town. 
The poorest mechanic in Spitalfields has a cistern 
and an unbounded supply of water at his com- 
mand ; but the gentlemen of the inns of court 
and the gentlemen of the universities have their 
supply of this cosmetic fetched in jugs by laun- 
dresses and bed -makers, and live in abodes which 
were erected long before the custom of cleanli- 
ness and decency obtained among us. There are 
individuals still alive who sneer at the people and 
speak of them with epithets of scorn. Gentle- 
men, there can be but little doubt that your an- 
cestors were the Great Unwashed : and in the 
Temple especially it is pretty certain that only 
under the greatest difficulties and restrictions 
the virtue which has been pronounced to be next 
to godliness could have been practiced at all. 

Old Grump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had 
lived for more than thirty years in the chambers 
under those occupied by Warrington and Penden- 
nis, and who used to be awakened by the roaring 
of the shower-baths which those gentlemen had 
erected in their apartments, part of the contents 
of which occasionally trickled through the roof 
into Mr. Grump's room, declared that the practice 
was an absurd, new-fangled, dandified folly, and 



THE OLD INNS OF COURT. 61 

daily cursed the laundress who slopped the stair- 
case by which he had to pass. Grump, now much 
more than half a century old, had, indeed, never 
used the luxury in question. He had done with- 
out water very well, and so had our fathers be- 
fore him. Of all those knights and baronets, 
lords and gentlemen, bearing arms, whose es- 
cutcheons are painted upon the walls of the fa- 
mous hall of the Upper Temple, was there no 
philanthropist good-natured enough to devise a 
set of Hummums for the benefit of the lawyers, 
his fellows and successors? The Temple his- 
torian makes no mention of such a scheme. 
There is Pump Court and Fountain Court, with 
their hydraulic apparatus, but one never heard of 
a bencher disporting in the fountain, and can't 
but think how many a counsel learned in the law 
of old days might have benefited by the pump. 

Nevertheless, those venerable Inns which have 
the Lamb and Flag and the Winged Horse for 
their ensigns have attractions for persons who in- 
habit them, and a share of rough comforts and 
freedom, which men always remember with plea- 
sure. I don't know whether the student of law 
permits himself the refreshment of enthusiasm, or 
indulges in poetical reminiscences as he passes by 
historical chambers, and says : " Yonder Eldon 
lived — upon this site Coke mused upon Lyttleton 
— here Chitty toiled — here Barnwell and Alderson 
joined in their famous labors — here Byles com- 



62 STRAY MOMENTS WITU THACKERAY. 

posed his great work upon bills, and Smith com- 
piled his immortal leading cases — here Gustavus 
still toils, with Solomon to aid him " ; but the 
man of letters can't but love the place which has 
been inhabited by so many of his brethren, or 
peopled by their creations as real to us at this day 
as the authors whose children they were — and Sir 
Roger de Coverley, walking in the Temple Gar- 
den and discoursing with Mr. Spectator about 
the beauties in hoops and patches who are saun- 
tering over the grass, is just as lively a figure to 
me as old Samuel Johnson rolling through the 
fog with the Scotch gentleman at his heels on 
their way to Dr. Goldsmith's chambers in Brick 
Court ; or Harry Fielding, with inked ruffles and 
a wet towel round his head, dashing off articles at 
midnight for the " Covent Garden Journal," while 
the printer's boy is asleep in the passage. — Pen- 
den7iis. 

AGAINST BACHELORHOOD. 

A committee of marriageable ladies, or of any 
Christian persons interested in the propagation of 
the domestic virtues, should employ a Cruikshank 
or a Leech, or some other kindly expositor of the 
follies of the day, to make a series of designs rep- 
resenting the horrors of a bachelor's life in cham- 
bers, and leading the beholder to think of better 
things, and a more wholesome condition. What 
can be more uncomfortable than the bachelor's 
lonely breakfast ? with the black kettle in the 



AGAINST BACHELORHOOD. G3 

dreary fire in midsuinmer ; or, worse still, with 
the fire gone out at Christmas half an hour af- 
ter the laundress has quitted the sitting-room ? 
Into this solitude the owner enters shivering, and 
has to commence his day by hunting for coals and 
wood ; and, before he begins the work of a stu- 
dent, has to discharge the duties of a housemaid, 
vice Mrs. Flanagan, who is absent without leave. 
Or, again, what can form a finer subject for the 
classical designer than the bachelor's shirt — that 
garment which he wants to assume just at dinner- 
time, and which he finds without any buttons to 
fasten it ? Then there is the bachelor's return to 
chambers, after a merry Christmas holiday, spent 
in a cosy country house, full of pretty faces, and 
kind welcomes and regrets. He leaves his port- 
manteau at the barber's in the court ; he lights 
his dismal old candle at the sputtering little lamp 
on the stair ; he enters the blank familiar room, 
where the only tokens to greet him that show any 
interest in his personal welfare are the Christmas 
bills which are lying in wait for him amiably 
spread out on his reading-table. Add to these 
scenes an appalling picture of bachelor's illness, 
and the rents in the Temple will begin to fall from 
the day of the publication of the dismal diorama. 
To be well in chambers is melancholy, and lonely 
and selfish enough ; but to be ill in chambers ; to 
pass nights of pain and watchfulness ; to long for 
the morning and the laundress ; to serve yourself 



64 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

your own medicine by your own watch ; to have 
no other companion for long hours but your own 
sickening fancies and fevered thoughts ; no kind 
hand to give you drink if you are thirsty, or to 
smooth the hot pillow that crumples under you ; 
this, indeed, is a fate so dismal and tragic that we 
shall not enlarge upon its horrors, and shall only 
heartily pity those bachelors in the Temple who 
brave it every day. — Pendennis. 

ON THE FOEMATIOlNr OF CHARACTER. 

We alter very little. When we talk of this 
man or that woman being no longer the same per- 
son whom we remember in youth, and remark (of 
course to deplore) changes in our friends, we 
don't, perhaps, calculate that circumstance only 
brings out the latent defect or quality, and does 
not create it. The selfish languor and indiffer- 
ence of to-day's possession is the consequence of 
the selfish ardor of yesterday's pursuit ; the scorn 
and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is 
but the lassitude of the sick appetite palled with 
pleasure ; the insolence of the successful parvenu 
is only the necessary continuance of the career of 
the needy struggler ; our mental changes are, like 
our gray hairs or our wrinkles, but the fulfillment 
of the plan of mortal growth and decay : that 
which is snow-white now was glossy black once ; 
that which is sluggish obesity to-day was boister- 
ous rosy health a few years back ; that calm weari- 



ON THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 65 

neas, benevolent, resigned, and disappointed, was 
ambition, fierce and violent, but a few years since, 
and has only settled into submissive repose after 
many a battle and defeat. Lucky he who can 
bear his failure so generously, and give up his 
broken sword to Fate the Conqueror with a man- 
ly and humble heart ! Are you not awe-stricken, 
you, friendly reader, who, taking the page up for 
a moment's light reading, lay it down, perchance, 
for a graver reflection — to think how you, who 
have consummated your success or your disaster, 
may be holding marked station, or a hopeless and 
nameless place in the crowd, who have passed 
through how many struggles of defeat, success, 
crime, remorse, to yourself only known ! who may 
have loved and grown old, wept and laughed 
again how often ! to think hoAv you are the same 
you whom in childhood you remember before the 
voyage of life began? It had been prosperous, 
and you are riding into port, the people huzzaing 
and the guns saluting, and the lucky captain bow- 
ing from the ship's side, and there is a care under 
the star on his breast which nobody knows of ; or 
you are wrecked, and lashed hopeless to a solitary 
spar out at sea ; the sinking man and the success- 
ful one are thinking each about home, very likely, 
and remembering the time when they were chil- 
dren, alone on the hopeless spar, drowning out of 
sight, alone in the midst of the crowd applauding 
you. — Pendennis. 
5 



66 STRAY MOMENTS AVITH THACKERAY. 



THE SAMENESS OF LIFE. 

If authors sneer, it is the critic's business to 
sneer at them for sneering. He must pretend to 
be their superior, or who would care about his 
opinion? And his livelihood is to find fault. 
Besides, he is right sometimes ; and the stories he 
reads, and the characters drawn in them, are old, 
sure enough. What stories are new ? All types 
of all characters march through all fables ; trem- 
blers and boasters ; victims and bullies ; dupes 
and knaves ; long-eared Neddies, giving them- 
selves leonine airs ; Tartuffes wearing virtuous 
clothing ; lovers and their trials, their blindness, 
their folly and constancy. With the very first 
page of the human story do not love and lies, too, 
begin ? So the tales were told ages before J^sop, 
and asses under lions' manes roared in Hebrew, 
and sly foxes flattered in Etruscan, and wolves in 
sheep's clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanskrit, 
no doubt. The sun shines to-day as he did when 
he first began shining ; and the birds in the tree 
overhead, while I am writing, sing very much the 
same note they have sung ever since they were 
finches. ISTay, since last he besought good-na- 
tured friends to listen once a month to his talking, 
a friend of the writer has seen the 'New World, 
and found the (featherless) birds there exceeding- 
ly like their brethren of Europe. There may be 
nothing new under and including the sun ; but it 



ON YOUTH AND AGE. 67 

looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it to 
toil, hope, scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, 
until the night comes and quiet. And then will 
wake Morrow and the eyes that look on it ; and 
so da capo. — The JSTewcomes, 

ON YOUTH AND AGE. 

Every man, however brief or inglorious may 
have been his academical career, must remember 
with kindness and tenderness the old university 
comrades and days. The young man's life is just 
beginning : the boy's leading strings are cut, and 
he has all the novel delights and dignities of free- 
dom. He has no idea of cares yet, or of bad 
health, or of roguery, or poverty, or to-morrow's 
disappointment. The play has not been acted so 
often as to make him tired. Though the after- 
drink, as we mechanically go on repeating it, is 
stale and bitter, how pure and brilliant was that 
first sparkling draught of pleasure ! How the 
boy rushes at the cup, and with what a wild ea- 
gerness he drains it ! But old epicures who are 
cut off from the delights of the table, and are re- 
stricted to a poached Qg^ and a glass of water^ 
like to see people with good appetites ; and, as 
the next best thing to being amused at a panto- 
mime one's self is to see one's children enjoy it, 
I hope there may be no degree of age or experi- 
ence to which mortal may attain, when he shall 
become such a glum philosopher as not to be 



68 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

pleased by the sight of happy youth. Coming 
back a few weeks since from a brief visit to the 
old University of Oxbridge, where my friend Mr. 
Arthur Pendennis passed some period of his life, 
I made the journey in the railroad by the side of 
a young fellow at present a student of Saint Boni- 
face. He had got an exeat somehow, and was 
bent on a day's lark in London ; he never stopped 
rattling and talking from the commencement of 
the journey until its close (which was a great deal 
too soon for me, for I never was tired of listen- 
ing to the honest young fellow's jokes and cheery 
laughter) ; and when we arrived at the terminus 
nothing would satisfy him but a Hansom cab, so 
that he might get into town the quicker, and 
plunge into the pleasures awaiting him there. 
Away the young lad went whirling, with joy 
lighting up his honest face ; and as for the read- 
er's humble servant, having but a small carpet- 
bag, I got up on the outside of the omnibus, and 
sat there very contentedly between a Jew ped- 
dler smoking bad cigars and a gentleman's ser- 
vant taking care of a poodle-dog, until we got 
our fated complement of passengers and boxes, 
when the coachman drove leisurely away. We 
weren't in a hurry to get to town. Neither one 
of us was particularly eager about rushing into 
that near smoking Babylon, or thought of dining 
at the Club that night, or dancing at the Casino. 
Yet a few years more, and my young friend of 



A NOTE. 69 

the railroad will be not a whit more eager. — Pen- 
den7iis. 

A NOTE. 

If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou 
wilt never be a wise man. — Lovel the Widower. 



SA TIRE, 



ON BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. 

It is quite edifying to hear women speculate 
upon the worthlessness and the duration of beau- 
ty. But though virtue is a much finer thing, and 
those hapless creatures who suffer under the mis- 
fortune of good looks ought to be continually put 
in mind of the fate which awaits them ; and 
though, very likely, the heroic female character 
which ladies admire is a more glorious and beau- 
tiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless, 
tender little domestic goddess, whom men are in- 
clined to worship — yet the latter and inferior sort 
of women must have this consolation — that the 
men do admire them, after all ; and that, in spite 
of all our kind friends' warnings and protest, we 
go on in our desperate error and folly, and shall 
to the end of the chapter. Indeed, for my own 
part, though I have been repeatedly told, by per- 
sons for whom I have the greatest respect, that 
Miss Brown is an insignificant chit, and Mrs. 
White has nothing but her petit minois chiffonnhy 



THE OLD BEAU. 71 

and Mrs. Black has not a word to say for herself : 
yet I know I have had the most delightful con- 
versations with Mrs. Black (of course, my dear 
madam, they are inviolable) ; I see all the men in 
a cluster around Mrs. White's chair, all the young 
fellows battling to dance with Miss Brown, and 
so I am tempted to think that to be despised by 
her sex is a very great compliment to a woman. — 
Vanity Fair. 

THE OLD BEAU. 

If men sneer, as our habit is, at the artifices of 
an old beauty, at her paint, perfumes, ringlets ; 
at those innumerable, and to us unknown, strata- 
gems with which she is said to remedy the ravages 
of time and reconstruct the charms whereof years 
have bereft her ; the ladies, it is to be presumed, 
are not on their side altogether ignorant that men 
are vain as well as they, and that the toilets of old 
bucks are to the full as elaborate as their own. 
How is it that old Blushington keeps that con- 
stant little rose-tint on his cheeks ; and where 
does old Blondel get the preparation which makes 
his silver hair pass for golden ? Have you ever 
seen Lord Hotspur get off his horse when he thinks 
nobody is looking? Taken out of his stirrups, 
his shiny boots can hardly totter up the steps of 
Hotspur House. He is a dashing young noble- 
man still as you see the back of him in Rotten 
Row ; when you behold him on foot, what an old, 
old fellow ! Did you ever form to yourself any 



72 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

idea of Dick Lacy (Dick has been Dick these sixty 
years) in a natural state, and without his stays ? 
All these men are objects whom the observer of 
human life and manners may contemplate with as 
much profit as the most elderly Belgravian Venus, 
or inveterate Mayfair Jezebel. An old reprobate 
daddy long-legs, who has never said his prayers 
(except perhaps in public) these fifty years : an 
old buck who still clings to as many of the habits 
of youth as his feeble grasp of health can hold 
by : who has given up the bottle, but sits with 
young fellows over it, and tells naughty stories 
upon toast and water : who has given up beauty, 
but still talks about it as wickedly as the young- 
est roue in company — such an old fellow, I say, 
if any parson in Pimlico or St. James's were to 
order the beadles to bring him into the middle 
aisle, and there set him in an arm-chair, and make 
a text of him, and preach about him to the con- 
gregation, could be turned to a wholesome use for 
once in his life, and might be surprised to find 
that some good thoughts came out of him. — JPen- 
dermis. 

THE BLINDNESS OF MATERNITY. 

All mothers are pleased by the compliments 

paid to their sons. If you had told Sycorax that 

her son, Caliban, was as handsome as Apollo, she 

would have been pleased, witch as she was. — 

Vanity Fair. 



HOW TO HOLD A WIFE'S LOVE. 73 

ON VAIN MEN. 

We have talked of a man being as vain as a 
girl. Heaven help us ! The girls have only to 
turn the tables, and say of one of their own sex, 
" She is as vain as a man," and they will have 
perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite 
as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their 
toilets, quite as proud of their personal advan- 
tages, quite as conscious of their powers of fas- 
cination, as any coquette in the world. — Yanity 
Fain 

HOW TO HOLD A WIFE\s LOVE. 

If I may speak, after profound and extensive 
study and observation, there are few better ways 
of securing the faithfulness and admiration of the 
beautiful partners of our existence than a little 
judicious ill treatment, a brisk dose of occasional 
violence as an alterative, and for general and 
wholesome diet a cooling but pretty constant neg- 
lect. At sparing intervals administer small quan- 
tities of love and kindness ; but not every day, 
or too often, as this medicine, much taken, loses 
its effect. 

Those dear creatures who are the most indif- 
ferent to their husbands are those who are cloyed 
by too much surfeiting of the sugar-plums and 
lollipops of love. I have known a young being, 
with every wish gratified, yawn in her adoring 
husband's face, and prefer the conversation and 



74 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

petits soins of the merest booby and idiot ; whilst, 
on the other hand, I have seen Chloe — at whom 
Strephon has flung his bootjack in the morning, 
or whom he has cursed before the servants at din- 
ner — come creeping and fondling to his knee at 
tea-time, v/hen he is comfortable after his little 
nap and his good wine ; and pat his head and 
play him his favorite tunes ; and when old John 
the butler, or old Mary the maid, comes in with 
the bed candles, look round proudly, as much as 
to say, Now, John, look how good my dearest 
Henry is ! Make your game, gentlemen, then ! 
There is the coaxing, fondling, adoring line, when 
you are henpecked, and Louisa is indifferent, and 
bored out of her existence. There is the manly, 
selfish, effectual system, where she answers to the 
whistle, and comes in at "Down charge"; and 
knows her master ; and frisks and fawns about 
him ; and nuzzles at his knees ; and "licks the 
hand that's raised " — that's raised to do her good, 
as (I quote from memory) Mr. Pope finely ob- 
serves. What used the late lamented O'Connell 
to say, over whom a grateful country has raised 
such a magnificent testimonial? "Hereditary 
bondsmen," he used to remark, "know ye not 
who would be free, themselves must strike the 
blow?" Of course you must, in political as in 
domestic circles. So up with your cudgels, my 
enslaved injured boys ! 

Women will be pleased with these remarks, 



THE INEVITABLE SKELETON. 75 

because they have such a taste for humor and 
understand irony ; and I should not be surprised 
if young Grubstreet, who corresponds with three 
penny papers and describes the persons and con- 
versation of gentlemen whom he meets at his 
" clubs," will say, " I told you so ! He advocates 
the thrashing of women ! He has no nobility of 
soul ! He has no heart ! " Nor have I, my emi- 
nent Grubstreet ! any more than you have ears. 
Dear ladies ! I assure you I am only joking in the 
above remarks ; I do not advocate the thrashing 
of your sex at all ; and, as you can't understand 
the commonest bit of fun, beg leave flatly to tell 
you, that I consider your sex a hundi-ed times 
more loving and faithful than ours. — The Yir- 
ginians. 

THE INEVITABLE SKELETON. 

The writer of these veracious pages was once 
walking through a splendid English palace, stand- 
ing amid parks and gardens, than which none 
more magnificent has been seen since the days of 
Aladdin, in company with a melancholy friend, 
who viewed all things darkly through his gloomy 
eyes. The housekeeper, pattering on before us 
from chamber to chamber, was expatiating upon 
the magnificence of this picture ; the beauty of 
that statue ; the marvelous richness of these hang- 
nigs and carpets ; the admirable likeness of the 
late Marquis by Sir Thomas ; of his father, the 
fifth earl, by Sir Joshua, and so on ; when, in the 



76 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

very richest room of the whole castle, Hicks — 
such was my melancholy companion's name — 
stopped the cicerone in her prattle, saying in a 
hollow voice, " And now, madam, will you show 
us the closet where the skeleton is f " The scared 
functionary paused in the midst of her harangue ; 
that article was not inserted in the catalogue 
which she daily utters to visitors for their half- 
crown. Hicks's question brought a darkness 
down upon the hall where we were standing. 
We did not see the room ; and yet I have no 
doubt there is such a one ; and ever after, when 
I have thought of the splendid castle, towering in 
the midst of shady trees, under which the dappled 
deer are browsing ; of the terraces, gleaming with 
statues, and bright with a hundred thousand flow- 
ers ; of the bridges and shining fountains and 
rivers wherein the castle windows reflect their 
festive gleams, when the halls are filled with 
happy feasters, and over the darkling woods 
comes the sound of music — always, I say, when 
I think of Castle Bluebeard — it is to think of that 
dark little closet, which I know is there, and 
which the lordly owner opens shuddering — after 
midnight — when he is sleepless and must go un- 
lock it, when the palace is hushed, when beauties 
are sleeping around him unconscious, and revelers 
are at rest. O Mrs. Housekeeper, all the other 
keys hast thou ; but that key thou hast not ! 
Have we not all such closets, my jolly friend, 



ON LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE. 77 

as well as the noble Marquis of Carabas? At 
night, when all the house is asleep but you, don't 
you get up and peep into yours ? When you, in 
your turn, are slumbering, up gets Mrs. Brown 
from your side, steals downstairs like Amina to her 
ghoul, clicks open the secret door, and looks into 
her dark depository. Did she tell you of that 
little affair with Smith long before she knew you ? 
Pshaw ! who knows any one save himself alone ? 
Who, in showing his house to the closest and 
dearest, doesn't keep back the key of a closet or 
two ? I think of a lovely reader laying down the 
page and looking over at her unconscious hus- 
band, asleep, perhaps, after dinner. Yes, madam, 
a closet he hath ; and you, who pry into every- 
thing, shall never have the key of it. I think of 
some honest Othello pausing over this very sen- 
tence in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing 
at Desdemona opposite him, innocently adminis- 
tering sandwiches to their little boy — I am trying 
to turn off the sentence with a joke, you see — I 
feel it is growing too dreadful, too serious. — The 
N'ewcomes. 

ON LOOKING OUT FOE NUMBER ONE. 

To push on in the crowd, every male or female 
struggler must use his or her shoulders. If a bet- 
ter place than yours presents itself just beyond 
our neighbor, elbow him and take it. Look how 
a steadily j)urposed man or woman at court, at a 



78 STRAY MOMENTS WITH TPIACKERAY. 

ball, or exhibition, wherever there is a competi- 
tion and a squeeze, gets the best place ; the near- 
est the sovereign, if bent on kissing the royal 
hand ; the closest to the grand stand, if minded 
to go to Ascot ; the best view and hearing of the 
Rev. Mr. Thiimpington, when all the town is rush- 
ing to hear that exciting divine ; the largest quan- 
tity of ice, champagne, and seltzer, cold pdte^ or 
other his or her favorite flesh-pot, if gluttonously 
minded, at a supper whence hundreds of people 
come emj)ty away. A woman of the world would 
marry her daughter and have done with her ; get 
a carriage, and be at home and asleep in bed ; 
while a timid mamma has still her girl in the 
nursery, or is beseeching the servants in the cloak- 
room to look for her shawls, with which some one 
else has whisked away an hour ago. What a man 
has to do in society is to assert himself. Is there 
a good place at table ? Take it. At the Treasury 
or the Home Office ? Ask for it. Do you want 
to go to a party to which you are not invited? 
Ask to be asked. Ask A., ask B., ask Mrs. C, 
ask everybody you know ; you will be thought a 
bore, but you will have your way. What matters 
if you are considered obtrusive, provided that you 
obtrude ? By pushing steadily, nine hundred and 
ninety-nine people in a thousand will yield to you. 
Only command persons, and you may be pretty 
sure that a good number will obey. How well 
your shilling will have been laid out, O gentle 



ON HYPOCRISY IN WOMEN. 79 

reader, who purchase this, and, taking the maxim 
to heart, follow it through life ! You may be sure 
of success. If your neighbor's foot obstructs you, 
stamp on it ; and do you suppose he won't take it 
away? — The Newcomes. 

ON HYPOCRISY IN WOMEN. 

I protest the great ills of life are nothing — the 
loss of your fortune is a mere flea-bite ; the loss 
of your wife — how many men have supported it, 
and married comfortably afterward ! It is not 
what you lose, but what you have daily to bear 
that is hard. I can fancy nothing more cruel, 
after a long easy life of bachelorhood, than to 
have to sit day after day with a dull handsome 
woman opposite ; to have to answer her speeches 
about the weather, housekeeping, and what not ; 
to smile appropriately when she is disposed to be 
lively (that laughing at the jokes is the hardest 
part), and to model your conversation so as to 
suit her intelligence, knowing that a word used 
out of its downright signification will not be un- 
derstood by your fair breakfast-maker. Women 
go through this simpering and smiling life, and 
bear it quite easily. Theirs is a life of hypocrisy. 
What good woman does not laugh at her hus- 
band's or father's jokes and stories time after 
time, and would not laugh at breakfast, lunch, 
and dinner, if he told them? Flattery is their 
nature — to coax, flatter, and sweetly befool some 



80 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

one is every woman's business. She is none if she 
declines this office. But men are not provided 
with such powers of humbug or endurance ; they 
perish and pine away miserably when bored, or 
they slink off to the club or public-house for 
comfort. — The JSFewcomes. 

THE PUKSUIT OF CRCESUS. 

Oh, me ! what a confession it is, in the very 
outset of life and blushing brightness of youth's 
morning, to own that the aim with which a young 
girl sets out, and the object of her existence, is 
to marry a rich man ; that she was endowed with 
beauty so that she might buy wealth, and a title 
with it ; that, as sure as she has a soul to be saved, 
her business here on earth is to try and get a rich 
husband. That is the career for which many a 
woman is bred and trained. A young man be- 
gins the world with some aspirations at least ; he 
will try to be good and follow the truth ; he will 
strive to win honors for himself, and never do a 
base action ; he will pass nights over his books, 
and forego ease and pleasure so that he may 
achieve a name. Many a poor wretch who is 
worn out now and old, and bankinipt of fame and 
money, too, has commenced life, at any rate, with 
noble views and generous schemes, from which 
weakness, idleness, passion, or overpowering hos- 
tile fortune have turned him away. But a girl of 
the world, ho7i Dieu ! the doctrine with which she 



ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG YOUNG WOMEN. 81 

begins is that she is to have a wealthy husband ; 
the article of faith in her catechism is : "I believe 
in elder sons, and a house in town, and a house in 
the country !" They are mercenary as they step 
fresh and blooming into the world out of the 
nursery. They have been schooled there to keep 
their bright eyes to look only on the prince and 
the duke, Croesus and Dives. By long cramping 
and careful process their little natural hearts have 
been squeezed up, like the feet of their fashiona- 
ble little sisters in China. As you see a pauper's 
child with an awful premature knowledge of the 
pawn-shop able to haggle at market with her 
wretched half -pence, and battle bargains at huck- 
sters' stalls, you shall find a young beauty, who 
was a child in the school-room a year since, as 
wise and knowing as the old practitioners on that 
exchange ; as economical of her smiles, as dexter- 
ous in keeping back or producing her beautiful 
wares ; as skillful in setting one bidder against 
another ; as keen as the smartest merchant in 
Vanity Fair. — The Newcomes. 

ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG YOUNG WOMEN. 

My fair young readers, who have seen a half 
dozen of seasons, can you call to mind the time 
when you had such a friendship for Emma Tom- 
kins that you were always at the Tomkinses', and 
notes were constantly passing between your house 
and hers ? When her brother, Paget Tomkins, 
6 



82 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

returned to India, did -not your intimacy with 
Emma fall off ? If your younger sister is not in 
the room, I know you will own as much to me. 
I think you are always deceiving yourselves and 
other people. I think the motive you put forward 
is very often not the real one ; though you will 
confess, neither to yourself, nor to any human be- 
ing, what the real motive is. I think that what 
you desire you pursue, and are as selfish in your 
way as your bearded fellow creatures are. And 
as for the truth being in you, of all the women in 
a great acquaintance, I protest there are but — 
never mind. A perfectly honest woman, a woman 
who never flatters, who never manages, who never 
cajoles, who never conceals, who never uses her 
eyes, who never speculates on the effect which she 
produces, who never is conscious of unspoken ad- 
miration, what a monster, I say, would such a 
female be ! Miss Hopkins, you have been a co- 
quette since you were a year old ; you worked on 
your papa's friends in the nurse's arms by the fas- 
cination of your lace frock and pretty new sash 
and shoes ; when you could just toddle, you prac- 
ticed your arts upon other children in the square, 
poor little lambkins sporting among the daisies ; 
and nunc in ovilia, mox in reluctantes dracones, 
proceeding from the lambs to reluctant dragoons, 
you tried your arts upon Captain Paget Tomkins, 
who behaved so ill, and went to India without — 
without making those proposals which, of course. 



ON THE ADORATION OF PRINCES. 83 

you never expected. Your intimacy was with 
Emma. It has cooled. Your sets are different. 
The Tomkinses are not quite, etc., etc. You be- 
lieve Captain Tomkins married a Miss O'Grady, 
etc., etc. Ah, my pretty, my sprightly Miss 
Hopkins, be gentle in your judgment of your 
neighbors ! — The N'ewcomes. 

ON THE ADOKATION OF PEINCES. 

It is a wonder what human nature will sup- 
port, and that, considering the amount of flattery 
some people are crammed with from their cradles, 
they do not grow worse and more selfish than 
they are. Princekin or lordkin from his earliest 
days has nurses, dependents, governesses, little 
friends, school-fellows, school-masters, fellow col- 
legians, college tutors, stewards and valets, led- 
captains of his suite, and women innumerable 
flattering him and doing him honor. The trades- 
man's manner, which to you and me is decently 
respectful, becomes straightway frantically servile 
before Princekin. Honest folks at railway sta- 
tions whisper to their families, *' That's the Mar- 
quis of Farintosh," and look hard at him as he 
passes. Landlords cry, " This way, my lord ; this 
room for your lordship." They say at public 
schools Princekin is taught the beauties of equal- 
ity, and thrashed into some kind of subordina- 
tion. Pshaw ! Toad-eaters in pinafores surround 
Princekin. Do not respectable people send their 



84 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

children so as to be at the same school with him ? 
don't they follow him to college, and eat his toads 
through life ? 

And as for women — oh, my dear friends and 
brethren in this vale of tears — did you ever see 
anything so curious, monstrous, and amazing as 
the way in which women court Princekin when 
he is marriageable, and pursue him with their 
daughters? Who was the British nobleman in 
old, old days who brought his three daughters to 
the king of Mercia, that his Majesty might choose 
one after inspection? Mercia was but a petty 
province, and its king in fact a Princekin. Ever 
since those extremely ancient and venerable times 
the custom exists not only in Mercia, but in all 
the rest of the provinces inhabited by the Angles, 
and before Princekins the daughters of our nobles 
are trotted out. — The Neiccomes. 

THE SECEECY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

How lonely we are in the world ! how selfish 
and secret, everybody ! You and your wife have 
pressed the same pillow for forty years and fancy 
yourself united. Pshaw ! does she cry out when 
you have the gout, or do you lie awake when she 
has the toothache ? Your artless daughter, seem- 
ingly all innocence and devoted to her mamma 
and her piano-lessons, is thinking of neither, but 
of the young Lieutenant with whom she danced 
at the last ball ; the honest, frank boy just re- 



THE PAGAN MARTYRS. 85 

turned from scliool is secretly speculating upon 
the money you will give him, and the debts he 
owes the tart man. The old grandmother croon- 
ing in the corner and bound to another world 
within a few months, has some business or cares 
which are quite private and her own — very likely 
she is thinking of fifty years back, and that night 
Avhen she made such an impression, and danced a 
cotillon with the Captain before your father pro- 
posed for her : or, what a silly little overrated 
creature your wife is, and how absurdly you are 
infatuated about her — and, as for your wife — oh, 
philosophic reader, answer and say ! do you tell 
her all ? Ah, sii* — a distinct universe walks about 
under your hat and under mine — all things in na- 
ture are different to each — the woman we look at 
has not the same features, the dish we eat from 
has not the same taste to the one and the other — 
you and I are but a pair of infinite isolations, with 
some fellow islands a little more or less near to 
us. — Pen dennis. 

THE PAGAN MYRTYES. 

I wish Warrington would write the history of 
the Last of the Pagans. Did you never have a 
sympathy for them as the monks came rushing 
into their temples, kicking down their poor altars, 
smashing the fair, calm faces of their gods, and 
sending their vestals a-flying ? They are always 
preaching here about the persecution of the Chris- 



86 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

tians. Are not the churches full of martyrs with 
choppers in their meek hands, virgins on grid- 
irons, riddled St. Sebastians, and the like ? But 
have they never persecuted in their turn ? Oh, me ! 
You and I know better, who were bred up near 
to the pens of Smithfield, where Protestants and 
Catholics have taken their turn to be roasted. — 
Pendennis. 

THE GOOD OLD COUNTEY GENTLEMAN. 

To be a good old country gentleman is to hold 
a position nearest the gods, and at the summit of 
earthly felicity. To have a large unencumbered 
rent-roll, and the rents regularly paid by adoring 
farmers, who bless their stars at having such a 
landlord as his honor ; to have no tenant holding 
back with his money, excepting just one, perhaps, 
who does so in order to give occasion to Good 
Old Country Gentleman to show his sublime 
charity and universal benevolence of soul ; to 
hunt three days a week, love the sport of all 
things, and have perfect good health and appetite 
in consequence ; to have not only good appetite, 
but a good dinner ; to sit down at church in the 
midst of a chorus of blessings from the villagers, 
the first man in the parish, the benefactor of the 
parish, with a consciousness of consummate de- 
sert, saying, " Have mercy upon us, miserable sin- 
ners," to be sure, but only for form's sake, because 
the words are written in the book, and to give 



THE GOOD OLD COUNTRY GENTLEMAN. 87 

other folks an example — a G. O. C. G., a miserable 
sinner ! So healthy, so wealthy, so jolly, so much 
respected by the vicar, so much honored by the 
tenants, so much beloved and admired by his 
family, among whom his story of grouse in the 
gun-room causes laughter from generation to gen- 
eration — this perfect being a miserable sinner ! 
Alio /IS done! Give any man good health and 
temper, five thousand a year, the adoration of his 
parish, and the love and worship of his family, 
and I'll defy you to make him so heartily dissatis- 
fied with his spiritual condition as to set himself 
down a miserable anything. If you were a royal 
highness, and went to church in the most perfect 
health and comfort, the parson waiting to begin 
the service until your R. H. came in, would you 
believe yourself to be a miserable, etc. ? You 
might when racked with gout, in solitude, the 
fear of death before your eyes, the doctor having 
cut off your bottle of claret, and ordered arrow- 
root and a little sherry, you might then be humili- 
ated, and acknowledge your own shortcomings, 
and the vanity of things in general ; but in high 
health, sunshine, spirits, that word miserable is 
only a form. You can't think in your heart that 
you are to be pitied much for the present. If 
you are to be miserable, what is Colin Ploughman 
with the ague, seven children, two pounds a year 
rent to pay for his cottage, and eight shillings a 
week ? No : a healthy, rich, jolly, country gentle- 



88 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

man if miserable has a very supportable misery ; 
if a sinner, has very few people to tell him so. — 
The Virginians, 

ON RESPECTED OLD AGE. 

As you sit, surrounded by respect and affec- 
tion ; happy, honored, and flattered in your old 
age ; your foibles gently indulged ; your least 
words kindly cherished ; your garrulous old stones 
received for the hundredth time with dutiful for- 
bearance and never-failing hypocritical smiles ; 
the women of your house constant in their flatter- 
ies : the young nien hushed and attentive when 
you begin to speak ; the servants awe-stricken ; 
the tenants cap in hand, and ready to act in the 
place of your worship's horses when your honor 
takes a drive — it has often struck you, O thought- 
ful Dives ! that this respect, and these glories, 
are for the main part transferred, with your fee 
simple, to your successor — that the servants will 
bow, and the tenants shout, for your son as for 
you : that the butler will fetch him the wine 
(improved by a little keeping) that is now in your 
cellar ; and that, when your night is come, and 
the light of your life is gone down, as soon as the 
morning rises after you and without you, the sun 
of prosperity and flattery shines on your heir. 
Men come and bask in the halo of consols and 
acres that beams round about him : the reverence 
is transferred with the estate ; of which with all 



ON BEING CROSSED IN LOVE. 89 

its advantages, pleasures, respect, and good- will, 
he in turn becomes the life tenant. How long do 
you wish or expect that your people will regret 
you? How much time does a man devote to 
grief before he begins to enjoy ? A great man 
must keep his heir at his feast like a living me- 
mento mori. If he holds very much by life, the 
presence of the other must be a constant sting and 
warning. " Make ready to go," says the successor 
to your honor ; " I am waiting ; and I could hold 
it as well as you." — Pendennis. 

ON BEING CROSSED IN LOVE. 

Young ladies may have been crossed in love, 
and have had their sufferings, their frantic mo- 
ments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, 
and so forth ; but it is only in very sentimental 
novels that people occupy themselves perpetually 
with that passion ; and I believe what are called 
broken hearts are very rare articles indeed. Tom 
is jilted — is for a while in a dreadful state — bores 
all his male acquaintance with his groans and 
his frenzy — rallies from the complaint — eats his 
dinner very kindly — takes an interest in the next 
turf event, and is found at Newmarket, as usual, 
bawling out the odds which he will give or take. 
Miss has her paroxysm and recovery — Madame 
Crinoline's new importations from Paris interest 
the young creature — she deigns to consider 
whether pink or blue will become her most — she 



90 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

conspires with the maid to make the spring moni- 
ing dresses answer for the autumn — she resumes 
her books, piano, and music (giving up certain 
songs perhaps that she used to sing) — she.waltzes 
with the Captain — gets a color — waltzes longer, 
better, and ten times quicker than Lucy, who is 
dancing with the Major — replies in an animated 
manner to the Captain's delightful remarks — takes 
a little supper — and looks quite kindly at him 
before she pulls uj) the carriage windows. — Pen- 
dennis. 

ANCIENT AND MODERN CULTURE AND MANNERS. 

People were still very busy in Harry Warring- 
ton's time (not that our young gentleman took 
much heed of the controversy) in determining 
the relative literary merits of the ancients and 
the moderns ; and the learned, and the world 
with them, indeed, pretty generally pronounced 
in favor of the former. The moderns of that 
day are the ancients of ours, and we speculate 
upon them in the present year of grace, as our 
grandchildren, a hundred years hence, will give 
their judgment about us. As for your book learn- 
ing, O respectable ancestors (though to be sure 
you have the mighty Gibbon with you), I think 
you will own that you are beaten, and could 
point to a couple of professors at Cambridge and 
Glasgow who know more Greek than was to be 
had in your time in all the universities of Europe, 



ANCIENT AND MODERN CULTURE, ETC. 91 

including that of Athens, if such a one existed. 
As for science, you were scarce more advanced 
than those heathen to whom in literature you 
owned yourselves inferior. And in public and 
private morality ? Which is the better, this ac- 
tual year 1858 or its predecessor a century back? 
Gentlemen of Mr. Disraeli's House of Commons ! 
has every one of you his price, as in Vf alpole's or 
Newcastle's time — or (and that is the delicate 
question) have you almost all of you had it? 
Ladies, I do not say that you are a society of 
Yestals — but the chronicle of a hundred years 
since contains such an amount of scandal that you 
may be thankful you did not live in such danger- 
ous times. No : on my conscience, I believe that 
men and women are both better ; not only that 
the Susannahs are more numerous, but that the 
Elders are not nearly so wicked. Did you ever 
hear of such books as '' Clarissa," " Tom Jones," 
*' Roderick Random," paintings by a contemporary 
artist, of the men and women, the life and society, 
of their day ? Suppose we were to describe the 
doings of such a person as Mr. Lovelace, or my 
Lady Bellaston, or that wonderful " Lady of 
Quality " who lent her memoirs to the author of 
"Peregrine Pickle." How the pure and out- 
raged Nineteenth Century would blush, scream, 
run out of the room, call away the young ladies, 
and order Mr. Mudie never to send one of that 
odious author's books again ! You are fifty-eight 



92 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

years old, madam, and it may be that you are too 
squeamish, that you cry out before you are hurt, 
and when nobody had any intention of offending 
your ladyship. Also, it may be that the novelist's 
art is injured by the restraints put upon him, as 
many an honest, harmless statue of St. Peter's 
and the Vatican is spoiled by the tin draperies 
in which ecclesiastical old women have swaddled 
the fair limbs of the marble. But in your prudery 
there is reason. So there is in the State censor- 
ship of the Press. The page may contain matter 
dangerous to bonos mores. Out with your scis- 
sors, censor, and clip off the prurient paragraph ! 
We have nothing for it but to submit. Society, 
the despot, has given his imperial decree. We 
may think the statue had been seen to greater 
advantage without the tin drapery ; we may plead 
that the moral were better might we recite the 
whole fable. Away with him — not a word ! I 
never saw the pianofortes in the United States 
with the frilled muslin trousers on their legs ; 
but, depend on it, the muslin covered some of the 
notes as well as the mahogany, muffled the music, 
and stopped the player. — The Virginians. 



C HABA C TEB. 



GEORGE I. 



When the crown did come to George Louis 
he was in no hurry about putting it on. He wait- 
ed at home for a while, took an affecting farewell 
of his dear Hanover and Herrenhausen, and set 
out in the most leisurely manner to ascend " the 
throne of his ancestors," as he called it in his first 
speech to Parliament. He brought with him a 
compact body of Germans, whose society he loved, 
and whom he kept around the royal person. He 
had his faithful German chamberlains ; his Ger- 
man secretaries ; his negroes, captives of his bow 
and spear in Turkish wars ; his two ugly, elderly 
German favorites, Mesdames of Kielmansegge and 
Schulenberg, whom he created respectively Count- 
ess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendal. The 
duchess was tall and lean of stature, and hence 
was irreverently nicknamed the Maypole. The 
countess was a large-sized noblewoman, and this 
elevated personage was denominated the Elephant. 



91 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

Both of these ladies loved Hanover, and its de- 
lights ; clung round the linden-trees of the great 
Herrenhausen avenue, and at first would not quit 
the place. Schulenberg, in fact, could not come 
on account of her debts ; but, finding the Maypole 
would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk 
and slipped out of Hanover, unv>^ieldy as she was. 
On this the Maypole straightway put herself in 
motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. 
One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, 
and Polly and Lucy. The king we had selected ; 
the courtiers who came in his train ; the English 
nobles who came to welcome him, and on many 
of whom the shrewd old cynic turned his back — 
I protest it is a wonderful satirical picture. I 
am a citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, say, and 
crying hurra for King George, and yet I can scarce- 
ly keep my countenance, and help laughing at the 
enormous absurdity of this advent ! 

Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the 
Archbishop of Canterbury prostrating himself to 
the head of his Church, with Kielmansegge and 
Schulenberg with their ruddled cheeks grinning 
behind the defender of the faith. Here is my 
Lord Duke of Marlborough kneeling too, the 
greatest warrior of all times ; he who betrayed 
King William — ^betrayed King James II. — be- 
trayed Queen Anne — betrayed England to the 
French, the Elector to the Pretender, the Pre- 
tender to the Elector ; and here are my Lords Ox- 



GEORGE I. 95 

ford and Bolingbroke, the latter of whom has just 
tripped up the heels of the former ; and, if a 
month's more time had been allowed him, would 
have had King James at Westminster. The great 
Whig gentlemen made their bows and conges with 
proper decorum and ceremony ; but yonder keen 
old schemer knows the value of their loyalty. 
*' Loyalty," he must think, " as applied to me — it is 
absurd ! There are fifty nearer heirs to the throne 
than I am. I am but an accident, and you fine 
Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake, not 
for mine. You Tories hate me ; you archbishop, 
smirking on your knees, and prating about heaven, 
you know I don't care a fig for your Thu'ty-nine 
Articles, and can't understand a word of your 
stupid sermons. You, my Lords Bolingbroke and 
Oxford — you know you were conspiring against 
me a month ago ; and you, my Lord Duke of 
Marlborough — you would sell me, or any man 
else, if you found your advantage in it. Come, 
my good Melusina ; come, my honest Sophia, let 
us go into my private room and have some oysters 
and Rhine wine, and some pipes afterward. Let 
us make the best of our situation ; let us take 
what we can get, and leave these bawling, brawl- 
ing, lying English to shout and fight and cheat in 
their own way ! " 

Delightful as London city was. King George 
I. liked to be out of it as much as ever he could : 



96 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

and, wlien there, passed all his time with his Ger- 
mans. It was with them as with BlUcher, one 
hundred years afterward, when the bold old Hit- 
ter looked down from St. Paul's, and sighed out, 
" Was f tir Plunder ! " The German women plun- 
dered ; the German secretaries plundered ; the 
German cooks and intendants plundered ; even 
Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had 
a share of the booty. Take what you can get, 
was the old monarch's maxim. He was not a lofty 
monarch, certainly ; he was not a patron of the 
fine arts ; but he was not a hypocrite, he was not 
revengeful, he was not extravagant. Though a 
despot in Hanover, he was a moderate ruler in 
England. His aim was to leave it to itself as 
much as possible, and to live out of it as much as 
he could. His heart was in Hanover. When tak- 
en ill on his last journey, as he was passing 
through Holland, he thrust his livid head out of 
the coach window, and gasped out, " Osnaburg, 
Osnaburg ! " He was more than fifty years of 
age when he came among us ; we took him be- 
cause we wanted him, because he served our turn ; 
we laughed at his uncouth German ways, and 
sneered at him. He took our loyalty for what 
it was worth, laid hands on what money he could; 
kept us assuredly from Popery and wooden shoes. 
I, for one, would have been on his side in those 
days. Cynical and selfish as he was, he was bet- 
ter than a king out of St. Germains with the French 



GEORGE 1. 97 

king's orders in his pocket and a swarm of Jesuits 
in his train. 

The days are over in England of that strange 
religion of king-worship, when priests flattered 
princes in the temple of God ; when servility was 
held to be ennobling duty ; when beauty and 
youth tried eagerly for royal favor ; and women's 
shame was held to be no dishonor. Mended 
morals and mended manners in courts and people 
are among the priceless consequences of the free- 
dom which George I. came to rescue and secure. 
He kept his compact with his English subjects ; 
and, if he escaped no more than other men and 
monarchs from the vices of his age, at least we 
may thank him for preserving and transmitting 
the liberties of ours. In our free air, royal and 
humble homes have alike been purified, and 
Truth, the birthright of the high and low among 
us, which quite fearlessly judges our greatest 
personages, can only speak of them now in words 
of respect and regard. There are stains in the 
portrait of our first George, and traits in it which 
none of us need admire ; but among the nobler 
features are justice, courage, moderation — and 
these we may recognize ere we turn the picture to 
the wall. — Lectures on the Four Georges. 

GEOKGE n. 

On the afternoon of the 14th of June, 1727, 
two horsemen might have been perceived gallop- 

7 



98 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

ing along the road from Chelsea to Richmond. 
The foremost, cased in the jack-boots of the pe- 
riod, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and very- 
corpulent cavalier ; but, by the manner in which 
he urged his horse, you might see that he was a 
bold as well as skillful rider. Indeed, no man 
loved sport better ; and in the hunting fields of 
Norfolk no squire rode more boldly after the fox, 
or cheered Ringwood and Sweettips more lustily, 
than he who now thundered over the Richmond 
road. 

He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and 
asked to see the owner of the mansion. The 
mistress of the house and her ladies, to whom 
our friend was admitted, said he could not be 
introduced to the master, however pressing the 
business might be. The master was asleep after 
his dinner ; he always slept after his dinner, and 
woe be to the person who interrupted him ! Never- 
theless, our stout friend of the jack-boots put 
the affrighted ladies aside, opened the forbidden 
door of the bedroom, wherein upon the bed lay a 
little gentleman ; and here the eager messenger 
knelt down in his jack-boots. 

He on the bed started up, and with many oaths 
and a strong German accent asked who was there, 
and who dared to disturb him ? 

" I am Sir Robert Walpole," said the messen- 
ger. The awakened sleeper hated Sir Robert 
Walpole. "I have the honor to announce to 



GEORGE II. 99 

your Majesty that your royal father, King George 
I., died at Osnaburg on Saturday last, the 10th 
inst." 

" Dat is one big lie ! " roared out his Sacred 
Majesty King George II. ; but Sir Robert Wal- 
pole stated the fact, and from that day until three- 
and-thirty years after, George, the second of the 
name, ruled over England. 

Our George II., at least, was not a worse king 
than his neighbors. He claimed and took the 
royal exemption from doing right which sover- 
eigns assumed. A dull little man of low tastes 
he appears to us in England ; yet Hervey tells us 
that this choleric prince was a great sentimental- 
ist, and that his letters — of which he wrote pro- 
digious quantities — were quite dangerous in their 
powers of fascination. He kept his sentimentali- 
ties for his Germans and his queen. With us 
English, he never chose to be familiar. He has 
been accused of avarice, yet he did not give much 
money, and did not leave much behind him. He 
did not love the fine arts, but he did not pretend 
to love them. He was no more a hypocrite about 
religion than his father. He judged men by a 
low standard ; yet, with such men as were near 
him, was he wrong in judging as he did ? He 
readily detected lying and flattery, and liars and 
flatterers were perforce his companions. Had he 
been more of a dupe, he might have been more 



100 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

amiable. A dismal experience made him cynical. 
No boon was it to him to be clear-sighted, and 
see only selfishness and flattery round about him. 
What could Walpole tell him about his Lords and 
Commons, but that they were all venal ? Did not 
his clergy, his courtiers, bring him the same story ? 
Dealing with men and women in his rude, skepti- 
cal way, he came to doubt about honor, male and 
female, about patriotism, about religion. *' He is 
wild, but he fights like a man," George I., the 
taciturn, said of his son and successor. Courage 
George II. certainly had. The Electoral Prince, 
at the head of his father's contingent, had ap- 
proved himself a good and brave soldier under 
Eugene and Marlborough. 

I fancy it was a merrier England (that of 
George II.) than the island which we inhabit. 
People high and low amused themselves very 
much more. I have calculated the manner in 
which statesmen and persons of condition passed 
their time — and, what with drinking and dining 
and supping and cards, wonder how they got 
through their business at all. They played all 
sorts of games, which, with the exception of 
cricket and tennis, have quite gone out of our 
manners now. In the old prints of St. James's 
Park you still see the marks along the walk to 
note the balls when the court played at Mall. 
Fancy Birdcage Walk now so laid out, and Lord 



GEORGE II. 101 

John and Lord Palmerston knocking balls up and 
down the avenue ! Most of those jolly sports 
belong to the past, and the good old games of 
England are only to be found in old novels, in 
old ballads, or the columns of dingy old news- 
papers, which say how a main of cocks is to be 
fought at "Winchester between the Winchester 
men and the Hampton men ; or how the Corn- 
wall men and the Devon men are going to hold a 
great wrestling match at Totnes, and so on. 

A hundred and twenty years ago there were 
not only country towns in England, but people 
who inhabited them. We were very much more 
gregarious ; we were amused by very simple plea- 
sures. Every town had its fair, every village its 
wake. The old poets have sung a hundred jolly 
ditties about great cudgel-playings, famous grin- 
ning through horse-collars, great may-pole meet- 
ings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run 
races clad in very light attire ; and the kind gen- 
try and good parsons thought no shame in look- 
ing on. Dancing bears went about the country 
with pipe and tabor. Certain well-known tunes 
were sung all over the land for hundreds of years, 
and high and low rejoiced in that simple music. 
Gentlemen who wished to entertain their female 
friends constantly sent for a band. When Beau 
Fielding, a mighty fine gentleman, was courting 
the lady whom he married, he treated her and her 
companions at his lodgings to a supper from the 



102 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

tavern, and after supper tliey sent out for a fid- 
dler, three of them. Fancy the three in a great 
wainscoted room in Covent Garden or Soho, light- 
ed by two or three candles in silver sconces, some 
grapes, and a bottle of Florence wine on the ta- 
ble, and the honest fiddler playing old tunes in 
quaint old minor keys, as the Beau takes out one 
lady after the other, and solemnly dances with 
her. The very great folks — young noblemen 
with their governors and the like — went abroad 
and made the grand tour ; the home satirist 
jeered at the Frenchified and Italian ways which 
they brought back ; but the greater number of 
people never left the country. The jolly squire 
often had never been twenty miles from home. 
Those who did go went to the baths, to Harrow- 
gate, or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. . . . 
When we try to recall social England, we must 
fancy it playing at cards for many hours every 
day. The custom is well-nigh gone out among 
us now, but fifty years ago was general, fifty 
years before that almost universal, in the country. 
" Gaming has become so much the fashion," writes 
Seymour, the author of the "Court Gamester," 
" that he who in company should be ignorant of 
the games in vogue would be reckoned low bred, 
and hardly fit for conversation." There were 
cards everywhere. It was considered ill bred to 
read in company. "Books were not fit articles 
for drawing-rooms," old ladies used to say. Peo- 



GEORGE II. 103 

pie were jealous, as it were, and angry with them. 
You will find in Hervey that George II. was al- 
ways furious at the sight of books ; and his 
Queen, who loved reading, had to practice it in 
secret in her closet. But cards were the resource 
of all the world. Every night, for hours, kings 
and queens of England sat down and handled 
their majesties of spades and diamonds. 

The King's fondness for Hanover occasioned 
all sorts of rough jokes among his English sub- 
jects, to whom sauer-Jcraut and sausages have 
ever been ridiculous objects. When our present 
Prince Consort came among us, the people bawled 
out songs in the streets indicative of the absurdi- 
ty of Germany in general. The sausage-shops 
produced enormous sausages which we might sup- 
pose were the daily food and delight of German 
princes. I remember the caricatures at the mar- 
riage of Prince Leopold with the Princess Char- 
lotte. The bridegroom was drawn in rags. 
George III.'s wife was called by the people a beg- 
garly German duchess ; the British idea being 
that all princes were beggarly except British 
princes. King George paid us back. He thought 
there were no manners out of Germany. Sarah 
Marlborough once coming to visit the Princess, 
while her Royal Highness was whipping one of 
the roaring royal children, " Ah ! " says George, 
who was standing by, " you have no good man- 



104 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

ners in England, because you are not properly 
brought up when you are young." He insisted 
that no English cooks could roast, no English 
coachman could drive : he actually questioned 
the superiority of our nobility, our horses, and 
our roast beef I 

While he was away from his beloved Hanover, 
everything remained there exactly as in the 
Prince's presence. There were eight hundred 
horses in the stables ; there was all the apparatus 
of chamberlains, court-marshals, and equerries ; 
and court assemblies were held every Saturday, 
where all the nobility of Hanover assembled at 
what I can't but think a fine and touching cere- 
mony. A large arm-chair was placed in the as- 
sembly room, and on it the King's portrait. The 
nobility advanced, and made a bow to the arm- 
chair, and to the image which Nebuchadnezzar 
the king had set up ; and spoke under their voices 
before the august picture, just as they would 
have done had the King Churfiirst been present 
himself. 

On the 25th day of October, 1760, he being 
then in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and 
the thirty-fourth of his reign, his page went to 
take him his royal chocolate, and behold ! the 
most religious and gracious King was lying dead 
on the floor. They went and fetched Walmoden ; 
but Walmoden could not wake him. The Sacred 



GEORGE TI. 105 

Majesty was but a lifeless corj^se. The King was 
dead ; God save the King ! But, of course, poets 
and clergymen decorously bewailed the late one. 
Here are some artless verses, in which an English 
divine deplored the famous departed hero, and 
over which you may cry or you may laugh, ex- 
actly as your humor suits : 

" "While at his feet expiring Faction lay, 
No contest left but who should best obey ; 
Saw in his offspring all himself renewed ; 
The same fair path of glory still pursued ; 
Saw to young George Augusta's care impart 
Whate'er could raise and humanize the heart ; 
Blend all his grandsire's virtues with his own, 
And form their mingled radiance for the throne — 
No further blessing could on earth be given — 
The next degree of happiness was — heaven ! " 

If he had been good, if he had been just, if 
he had been pure in life, and wise in council, could 
the poet have said much more ? It was a parson 
who came and went over this grave, with Wal- 
moden sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the 
poor old man slumbering below. Here was one 
who had neither dignity, learning, morals, nor 
wit — who tainted a great society by a bad exam- 
ple ; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, 
low, and sensual : and Mr. Porteus, afterward my 
Lord Bishop Porteus, says the earth was not 
good enough for him, and that his only place was 
heaven ! Bravo, Mr. Porteus ! The divine who 



lOG STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

wept these tears over George II. 's memory wore 
George III.'s lawn. I don't know whether people 
still admire his poetry or his sermons. — Lectures 
on the Four Georges. 

GEORGE III. 

I pass over the story of his juvenile loves of 
Hannah Lightfoot, the Quaker, to whom they say 
he was actually married (though I don't know 
who has ever seen the register of lovely black- 
haired Sarah Lennox, about whose beauty Wal- 
pole has written in raptures, and who used to lie 
in wait for the young prince and make hay at him 
on the lawn of Holland House. He sighed and 
he longed, but he rode away from her. Her pic- 
ture still hangs in Holland House, a magnificent 
masterpiece by Reynolds, a canvas worthy of 
Titian. She looks from the castle window, hold- 
ing a bird in her hand, at black-eyed young 
Charles Fox, her nephew. The royal bird flew 
away from lovely Sarah. She had to figure as 
bridemaid at her little Mecklenburg rival's wed- 
ding, and died in our own time a quiet old lady, 
who had become the mother of the heroic Napiers. 

They say the little princess who had written 
the fine letter about the horrors of war — a beauti- 
ful letter without a single blot, for which she was 
to be rewarded, like the heroine of the old spelling- 
book story — was at play one day with some of 
her young companions in the gardens of Strelitz, 



GEORGE III. 107 

and that the young ladies' conversation was, 
strange to say, about husbands. " Who will take 
such a poor little princess as me ? " Charlotte said 
to her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very 
moment the postman's horn sounded, and Ida 
said, "Princess ! there is the sweetheart." As 
she said, so it actually turned out. The postman 
brought letters from the splendid young King of 
all England, who said, " Princess ! because you 
have written such a beautiful letter, which does 
credit to your head and heart, come and be Queen 
of Great Britain, France and Ireland, and the 
true wife of your most obedient servant, George ! " 
So she jumped for joy, and went up stairs and 
packed all her little trunks, and set off straight- 
way for her kingdom in a beautiful yacht, with a 
harpsichord on board for her to play upon, and 
around her a beautiful fleet all covered with flags 
and streamers, and the distinguished Madame 
Auerbach complimented her with an ode, a trans- 
lation of which may be read in the " Gentleman's 
Magazine " to the present day : 

" Her gallant navy through the main 
Now cleaves its liquid way, 
There to their queen a cliosen train 
Of nymphs due reverence pay. 

" Europa, when conveyed by Jove 
To Crete's distinguished shore, 
Greater attention scarce could prove, 
Or be respected more." 



108 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

They met and they were married, and for 
years they led the happiest, simplest lives, sure, 
ever led by married couple. It is said the King 
winced when he first saw his homely little bride ; 
but, however that may be, he was a true and faith- 
ful husband to her, as she was a faithful and lov- 
ing wife. They had the simplest pleasures — the 
very mildest and simplest ; little country dances, 
to which a dozen couple were invited, and where 
the honest King would stand up and dance for 
three hours at a time to one tune ; after which 
delicious excitement they would _go to bed with- 
out any supper (the court people grumbling sadly 
at that absence of supper), and get up quite early 
the next morning, and perhaps the next night 
have another dance ; or the Queen would play on 
the spinet — she played pretty well, Haydn said — 
or the King would read to her a paper out of 
" The Spectator," or perhaps one of Ogden's ser- 
mons. O Arcadia ! what a life it must have 
been ! There used to be Sunday drawing-rooms 
at court ; but the young King stopped these, as 
he stopped all that godless gambling whereof we 
have made mention. Not that George was averse 
to any innocent pleasures, or pleasures which he 
thought innocent. He was a patron of the arts, 
after his fashion; kind and gracious to the artists 
whom he favored, and respectful to their calling. 
He wanted once to establish an Order of Minerva 
for literary and scientific characters ; the knights 



GEORGE III. 109 

were to take rank after the Knights of the Bath, 
and to sport a straw-colored ribbon and a star of 
sixteen points. But there was such a row among 
the literati as to the persons who should be ap- 
pointed, that the plan was given up, and Minerva 
and her star never came down among us. He ob- 
jected to painting St. Paul's as Popish practice ; 
accordingly, the most clumsy heathen sculptures 
decorate that edifice at present. It is fortunate 
that the paintings, too, were spared, for painting 
and drawing were wofully unsound at the close of 
the last century ; and it is far better for our eyes 
to contemplate whitewash (when we turn them 
away from the clergyman) than to look at Opie's 
pitchy canvases or Fuseli's livid monsters. And 
yet there is one day in the year when old George 
loved with all his heart to attend it — when I think 
St. PauPs presents the noblest sight in the whole 
world ; when five thousand charity children, with 
cheeks like nosegays, and sweet, fresh voices, 
sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill 
with praise and happiness. I have seen a 
hundred grand sights in the world — corona- 
tions, Parisian splendors, Crystal Palace open- 
ings. Pope's chapels with their processions of 
long-tailed cardinals, and quavering choirs of 
fat soprani ; but think in all Christendom there 
is no such sight as Charity Children's day. Non 
Angli^ sed angeli. As one looks at that beauti- 
ful multitude of innocents — as the first note 



110 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

strikes — indeed one may almost fancy that clierubs 
are singing. 

Of church music the King was always very 
fond, showing skill in it both as a critic and a per- 
former. Many stories, mirthful and affecting, are 
told of his behavior at the concerts which he or- 
dered. When he was blind and ill he chose the 
music for the Ancient Concerts once, and the mu- 
sic and words which he selected were from " Sam- 
son Agonistes," and all had reference to his blind- 
ness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would 
beat time with his music-roll as they sang the an- 
them in the Chapel Royal. If the page below 
was talkative or inattentive, down would come 
the music-roll on young scapegrace's powdered 
head. The theatre was always his delight. His 
bishops and clergy used to attend it, thinking it 
no shame to appear where that good man was seen. 
He is said not to have cared for Shakespeare or 
tragedy much ; farces and pantomimes were his 
joy ; and especially when clown swallowed a car- 
rot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so out- 
rageously that the lovely Princess by his side 
would have to say, " My gracious monarch, do 
compose yourself." But he continued to laugh, 
and at the very smallest farces, as long as his poor 
wits were left him. 

There is something to me exceedingly touch- 
ing in that simple early life of the King's. As 
long as his mother lived — a dozen years after his 



GEORGE III. Ill 

marriage witli the little spinet-player — ^he was a 
great, shy, awkward boy, under the tutelage of 
that hard parent. She must have been a clever, 
domineering, cruel woman. She kept her house- 
hold lonely and in gloom, mistrusting almost all 
people who came about her children. Seeing the 
young Duke of Gloucester silent and unhappy 
once, she sharply asked him the cause of his 
silence. "I am thinking," said the poor child. 
" Thinking, sir ! and of what ? " "I am think- 
ing if ever I have a son I will not make him so 
unhappy as you make me." The other sons were 
all wild, except George. Dutifully every evening 
George and Charlotte paid their visit to the 
King's mother at Carlton House. She had a 
throat complaint, of which she died ; but to the 
last persisted in driving about the streets to show 
she was alive. The night before her death the 
resolute woman talked with her son and daugh- 
ter-in-law as usual, went to bed, and was found 
dead there in the morning. "George, be a 
King ! " were the words which she was for ever 
croaking in the ears of her son ; and a King the 
simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried 
to be. 

He did his best ; he worked according to his 
lights ; what virtue he knew, he tried to prac- 
tice ; what knowledge he could muster, he strove 
to acquire. He was for ever drawing maps, for 
example, and learned geography with no small 



112 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

care and industry. He knew all about tlie family 
histories and genealogies of his gentry, and pretty 
histories he must have known. He knew the 
whole " Army List " ; and all the facings, and 
the exact number of the buttons, and all the tags 
and laces, and the cut of all the cocked hats, pig- 
tails, and gaiters in his army. He knew the per- 
sonnel of the universities ; what doctors were 
inclined to Socinianism, and who were sound 
Churchmen ; he knew the etiquettes of his own 
and his grandfather's courts to a nicety, and the 
smallest particulars regarding the routine of min- 
isters, secretaries, embassies, audiences, the hum- 
blest page in the anteroom or the meanest helper 
in the stables or kitchen. These parts of the 
royal business he was capable of learning, and he 
learned. But, as one thinks of an office, almost 
divine, performed by any mortal man — of any 
single being pretending to control the thoughts, 
to direct the faith, to order the implicit obedience 
of brother millions, to compel them into war at 
his offense or quarrel ; to command, " In this 
way you shall trade, in this way you shall think ; 
these neighbors shall be your allies whom you 
shall help, these others your enemies whom you 
shall slay at my orders ; in this way you shall 
worship God " — who can wonder that, when such 
a man as George took such an office on himself, 
punishment and humiliation should fall upon peo- 
ple and chief ? 



GEORGE III. 113 

Yet there is something grand about his cour- 
age. The battle of the King with his aristocracy- 
remains yet to be told by the historian who shall 
view the reign of George more justly than the 
trumpery panegyrists who wrote immediately 
after his decease. It was he, with the people to 
back him, who made the war with America ; it 
was he and the people who refused justice to the 
Roman Catholics ; and on both questions he beat 
the patricians. He bribed ; he bullied ; he dark- 
ly dissembled on occasion ; he exercised a slip- 
pery perseverance and a vindictive resolution, 
which one almost admires as one thinks his char- 
acter over. His courage was never to be beat. 
It trampled North under foot ; it bent the stiff 
neck of the younger Pitt ; even his illness never 
conquered that indomitable spirit. As soon as 
his brain was clear it resumed the scheme, only 
laid aside when his reason left him. As soon as 
his hands were put out of the straight waistcoat, 
they took up the pen and the plan which had en- 
gaged him up to the moment of his malady. I 
believe it is by persons believing themselves in 
the right that nine-tenths of the tyranny of this 
world has been perpetrated. Arguing on that 
convenient premise, the Dey of Algiers would 
cut off twenty heads of a morning ; Father Dom- 
inic would burn a score of Jews in presence of 
the Most Catholic King, and the Archbishops of 
Toledo and Salamanca sing amen. Protestants 
8 



114 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

were roasted, Jesuits hung and quartered at Smith- 
field, and witches burned at Salem, and all by- 
worthy people who believed they had the best 
authority for their actions. 

King George's household was a model of an 
English gentleman's household. It was early ; 
it was kindly ; it was charitable ; it was orderly ; 
it must have been stupid to a degree which I 
shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all the 
princes ran away from the lap of that dreary do- 
mestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined at stated 
intervals. Day after day was the same. At the 
same hour at night the King kissed his daughters' 
jolly cheeks, the princesses kissed their mother's 
hand, and Madame Thielke brought the royal 
nightcap. At the same hour the equerries and wo- 
men in waiting had their little dinner and cackled 
over their tea. The King had his backgammon 
or his evening concert ; the equerries yawned 
themselves to death in the anteroom ; or the 
King and his family walked on Windsor slopes, 
the King holding his darling little Princess Ame- 
lia by the hand ; and the people crowded round 
quite good-naturedly ; and the Eton boys thrust 
their chubby cheeks under the crowd's elbows ; 
and, the concert over, the King never failed to 
take his enormous cocked hat off, and salute his 
band, and say, " Thank you, gentlemen." 

A quieter household, a more prosaic life than 



GEORGE III. 115 

this of Kew or Windsor, can not be imagined. 
Rain or shine, the King rode every day for hours; 
poked his red face into hundreds of cottages round 
about, and showed that shovel-hat and Windsor 
uniform to farmers, to pig-boys, to old women 
making apple-dumplings — to all sorts of people, 
gentle and simple, about whom countless stories 
are told. Nothing can be more undignified than 
these stories. When Haroun Alraschid visits a 
subject incog., the latter is sure to be very much 
the better for the caliph's magnificence. Old 
George showed no such royal splendor. He used 
to give a guinea sometimes ; sometimes feel in his 
pockets and find he had no money ; often ask a 
man a hundred questions : about the number of 
his family, about his oats and beans, about the 
rent he paid for his house, and ride on. On one 
occasion he played the part of King Alfred, and 
turned a piece of meat with a string at a cot- 
tager's house. When the old woman came home, 
she found a paper with an inclosure of money, 
and a note written by the royal pencil : " Five 
guineas to buy a jack." It was not splendid, but 
it was kind and worthy of Farmer George. One 
day when the King and Queen were walking to- 
gether, they met a little boy — they were always 
fond of children, the good folks — and patted the 
little white head. " Whose little boy are you ? " 
asks the Windsor uniform. ** I am the King's 
beef-eater's little boy," replied the child. On 



116 STRAY jrOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

which the King said, " Then kneel down and kiss 
the Queen's hand." But the innocent offspring 
of the beef-eater declined this treat. " No," said 
he, " I won't kneel ; for if I do I shall spoil my 
new breeches." The thrifty King ought to have 
hugged him and knighted him on the spot. 
George's admirers wrote pages and pages of such 
stories about him. One morning, before anybody 
else was up, the King walked about Gloucester 
town ; pushed over Molly the housemaid with her 
pail, who was scrubbing the doorsteps ; ran up 
stairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms; 
and then trotted down to the bridge, where by 
this time a dozen louts were assembled. " What ! 
is this Gloucester new bridge ? " asked our gracious 
monarch ; and the people answered him, " Yes," 
your Majesty." *' Why, then, my boys," said he, 
" let us have a huzza ! " After giving them which 
intellectual gratification he went home to break- 
fast. 

From November, 1810, George III. ceased to 
reign. All the world knows the story of his mal- 
ady ; all history presents no sadder figure than 
that of the old man, blind and deprived of rea- 
son, wandering through the rooms of bis palace, 
addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fan- 
cied troops, holding ghostly courts. I have seen 
his picture as it was taken at this time, hang- 
ing in the apartment of his daughter, the Land- 



GEORGE III. 117 

gravino of Hessc-Hombourg — amid books and 
Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminis- 
cences of her English home. The poor old father 
is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard 
falling over his breast — the star of his famous 
Order still idly shining on it. He was not only 
sightless, he became utterly deaf. All light, all 
reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasure 
of this world of God, were taken from him. Some 
slight lucid moments he had ; in one of which, 
the Queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, 
and found him singing a hymn, and accompany- 
ing himself at the harpsichord. When he had 
finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, 
and then for his family, and then for the nation, , 
concluding with a prayer for himself, that it 
might please God to avert his heavy calamity 
from him, but, if not, to give him resignation to 
submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason 
again fled. 

What preacher need moralize on this story ? 
What words save the simplest are requisite to 
tell it ? It is too terrible for tears. The thought 
of such a misery smites me down in submission 
before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch 
Supreme over empires and republics, the inscruta- 
ble Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory, 
" O brothers ! " I said to those who heard me first 
in America — " O brothers ! speaking the same 
dear mother-tongue — O comrades ! enemies no 



118 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

more, let us take a mournful hand together as we 
stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to bat- 
tle ! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to 
kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poor- 
est : dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. 
Driven off his throne ; buffeted by rude hands ; 
with his children in revolt ; the darling of his old 
age killed before him untimely ; our Lear hangs 
over her breathless lips and cries, " Cordelia, Cor- 
delia, stay a little ! " 

" Vex not his ghost. Oh ! let him pass — he hates them 
That would upon the rack of this rough world 
Stretch him out longer! " 

Hush ! strife and quan-el over the solemn 
grave ! " Sound trumpets, a mournful march. 
Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, 
his grief, his awful tragedy." — Lectures on the 
Four Georges. 

GEOEGE IV. 

To make a portrait of hijn at first seemed a 
matter of small difficulty. There is his coat, his 
star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it. 
With a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this 
very desk perform a recognizable likeness of him. 
And yet, after reading of him in scores of volumes, 
hunting him through old magazines and news- 
papers, having him here at a ball, there at a pub- 
lic dinner, there at races, and so forth, you find 
you have nothing — nothing but a coat and a wig 



GEORGE IV. 119 

and a mask smiling below it — nothing but a great 
simulacrum. His sire and grandsires were men. 
One knows what they were like ; what they would 
do in given circumstances ; that on occasions 
they fought and demeaned themselves like tough 
good soldiers. They had friends whom they liked 
according to their natures ; enemies whom they 
hated fiercely ; passions and actions and individ- 
ualities of their own. The sailor King who came 
after George was a man ; the Duke of York was 
a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. 
But this George, what was he ? I look through 
all his life and recognize but a bow and a grin. 
I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stock- 
ings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur 
collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handker- 
chief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best 
nutty-brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth 
and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more 
under-waistcoats, and then nothing. I linow of 
no sentiment that he ever distinctly uttered. 
Documents are published under his name, but 
people wrote them — private letters, but people 
spelt them. He put a great George P. or George 
R. at the bottom of the page and fancied he had 
written the paper : some bookseller's clerk, some 
poor author, some man did the work ; saw to the 
spelling, cleaned up the slovenly sentences, and 
gave the lax maudlin slipslop a sort of consistency. 
He must have had an individuality : the dancing- 



120 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

master whom he emulated — nay, surpassed — the 
wig-maker who curled his toupee for him, the 
tailor who cut his coats, had that. But about 
George, one can get at nothing actual. That out- 
side, I am certain, is pad and tailor's work ; there 
may be something behind, but what ! We can 
not get at the character ; no doubt never shall. 
Will men of the future have nothing better to do 
than to unswathe and interpret that royal old 
mummy ? I own I once used to think it would be 
good sport to pursue him, fasten on him, and pull 
him down ; but now I am ashamed to mount and 
lay good dogs on, to summon a full field, and 
then to hunt the poor game. 

The boy is father of the man. Our Prince 
signalized his entrance into the world by a feat 
worthy of his future life. He invented a new 
shoebuckle. It was an inch long and five inches 
broad. "It covered almost the whole instep, 
reaching down to the ground on either side of the 
foot." A sweet invention ! lovely and useful as 
the Prince on whose foot it sparkled. At his 
first appearance at a court ball, we read that *' his 
coat was pink silk, with white cuffs ; his waist- 
coat white silk, embroidered with various colored 
foil, adorned with a profusion of French paste. 
And his hat was ornamented with two rows of 
steel beads, five thousand in number, with a but- 
ton and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a 



GEORGE IV. 121 

new military style." What a Florizel ! Do these 
details seem trivial? They are the grave inci- 
dents of his life. His biographers say that when 
he commenced housekeeping in that splendid new 
palace of his, the Prince of "Wales had some 
windy projects of encouraging literature, science, 
and the arts ; of having assemblies of literary 
characters ; and societies for the encom-agement 
of geography, astronomy, and botany. Astron- 
omy, geography, and botany ! Fiddlesticks ! 
French ballet-dancers, French cooks, horse jock- 
eys, buffoons, procurers, tailors, boxers, fencing- 
masters, china, jewel and gimcrack merchants — 
these were his real companions. At first he made 
a pretense of having Burke and Fox and Sheridan 
for his friends. But how could such men be se- 
rious before such an empty scapegrace as this 
lad ? Fox might talk dice with him, and Sheri- 
dan wine ; but what else had these men of genius 
in common with their tawdry young host of 
Carlton House ! That fribble the leader of such 
men as Fox and Burke ! That man's opinions 
about the Constitution, the India Bill, justice to 
the Catholics — -about any question graver than 
the button for a waistcoat or the sauce for a 
partridge — worth anything ! The friendship be- 
tween the Prince and the Whig chiefs was im- 
possible. They were hypocrites in pretending to 
respect him, and, if he broke the holloAV compact 
between them, who shall blame him ? His natu- 



122 STEAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

ral companions were dandies and parasites. He 
could talk to a tailor or a cook ; but, as the equal 
of great statesmen, to set up a creature, lazy, 
weak, indolent, besotted, of monstrous vanity, 
and levity incurable — it is absurd. They thought 
to use him, and did for a while ; but they must 
have known how timid he was — how entirely 
heartless and treacherous, and have expected his 
desertion. His next set of friends were mere 
table companions, of whom he grew tired too. 
Then we hear of him with a very few select 
toadies, mere boys from school in the Guards, 
whose sprightliness tickled the fancy of the worn- 
out voluptuary. What matters what friends he 
had ? He dropped all his friends ; he never could 
have real friends. An heir to the throne has 
flatterers, adventurers who hang about him, am- 
bitious men who use him ; but friendship is de- 
nied him. 

The Prince's table, no doubt, was a very 
tempting one. The wits came and did their 
utmost to amuse him. It is wonderful how the 
spirits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an 
aroma, when a great man is at the head of the 
table. Scott, the loyal cavalier, the King's true 
liegeman, the very best raconteur of his time, 
poured out with an endless generosity his store of 
old-world learning, kindness, and humor. Grattan 
contributed to it his wondrous eloquence, fancy. 



GEORGE IV. 123 

feeling. Tom Moore perched upon it for a while, 
and piped his most exquisite little love-tunes on 
it, flying away in a twitter of indignation after- 
ward, and attacking the Prince with bill and 
claw. In such society, no wonder the sitting 
was long, and the butler tired of drawing corks. 
Remember what the usages of the time were ; 
and that William Pitt, coming to the House of 
Commons after having drunk a bottle of port 
wine at his own house, would go into Bellamy's 
with Dundas, and help finish a couple more. 

He is dead but thirty years, and one asks how 
a great society could have tolerated him ? "Would 
we bear him now ? In this quarter of a century, 
what a silent revolution has been working ! How 
it has separated us from old times and manners ! 
How it has changed men themselves ! I can see 
old gentlemen now among us, of perfect good 
breeding, of quiet lives, with venerable gray 
heads, fondling their grandchildren ; and look at 
them, and wonder at what they were once. That 
gentleman of the grand old school, when he was 
in the 10th Hussars, and dined at the Prince's 
table, would fall under it night after night. 
Night after night that gentleman sat at Brookes's 
or Raggett's over the dice. If, in the petulance of 
play or drink, that gentleman spoke a sharp word 
to his neighbor, he and the other would infallibly 
go out and try to shoot each other the next morn- 



124 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

ing. That gentleman would drive his friend 
Richmond the black boxer down to Moulsey, and 
hold his coat, and shout and swear, and hurra 
with delight, whilst the black man was beating 
Dutch Sam the Jew. That gentleman would 
take a manly pleasure in pulling his own coat off, 
and thrashing a bargeman in a street row. That 
gentleman has been in a watch-house. That 
gentleman so exquisitely polite with ladies in a 
drawing-room, so loftily courteous, if he talked 
now as he used among men in his youth, would 
swear so as to make your hair stand on end. I 
met lately a very old German gentleman, who 
had served in our army at the beginning of the 
century. Since then he has lived on his own 
estate, but rarely meeting with an Englishman, 
whose language — the language of fifty years ago, 
that is — he possesses perfectly. When this highly 
bred old man began to speak English to me, 
almost every other word he uttered was an oath, 
such as they used (they swore dreadfully in Flan- 
ders) with the Duke of York before Valenciennes, 
or at Carlton House over the supper and cards. 

Which was the most splendid spectacle ever 
witnessed — the opening feast of Prince George 
in London, or the resignation of Washington? 
Which is the noble character for after-ages to 
admire — yon fribble dancing in lace and spangles, 
or yonder hero who sheathes his sword after a 



THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. 125 

life of spotless honor, a purity unreproached, a 
courage indomitable, and a consummate victory ? 
Which of these is the true gentleman ? What is 
it to be a gentleman ? Is it to have lofty aims, 
to lead a pure life, to keep your honor virgin ; to 
have the esteem of your fellow-citizens, and the 
love of your fireside ; to bear good fortune 
meekly ; to suffer evil with constancy ; and 
through evil or good to maintain truth always ? 
Show me the happy man whose life exhibits these 
qualities, and him we will salute as a gentleman 
whatever his rank may be ; show me the prince 
who possesses them, and he may be sure of our 
love and loyalty. — Lectures on the Four Georges, 

THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. 

And now, having seen a great military march 
through a friendly country, the pomps and festiv- 
ities of more than one German court, the severe 
struggle of a hotly contested battle, and the tri- 
umph of victory, Mr. Esmond beheld another part 
of military duty— our troops entering the enemy's 
territory, and putting all around them to fire and 
sword ; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking 
women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunk- 
en soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of 
tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately 
Muse of History, that delights in describing the 
valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, 
leave out these scenes, so brutal, mean, and de- 



126 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

grading, that yet form by far tlie greater part 
of the drama of war? You, gentlemen of Eng- 
land, who live at home at ease, and compliment 
yourselves in the songs of triumph with which 
our chieftains are bepraised — you, pretty maidens, 
that come tumbling down the stairs when the fife 
and drum call you, and huzza for the British 
grenadiers — do you take account that those items 
go to make up the amount of triumph you ad- 
mire, and form part of the duties of the heroes 
you fondle? Our chief, whom England and all 
Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshiped 
almost, had this of the godlike in him, that he 
was impassible before victory, before danger, be- 
fore defeat ; before the greatest obstacle, or the 
most trivial ceremony ; before a hundred thou- 
sand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaugh- 
tered at the door of his burning hovel ; before a 
carouse of drunken German lords, or a monarch's 
court, or a cottage table, where his plans were 
laid, or an enemy's battery, vomiting flame and 
death, and strewing corpses round about him — he 
was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He 
performed a treason or a court bow ; he told a 
falsehood as black as Styx as easily as he paid a 
compliment or spoke about the weather ; he took 
a mistress, and left her ; he betrayed his bene- 
factor, and supported him, or would have mur- 
dered him, with the same calmness always, and 
having no more remorse than Clotho, when she 



THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH 127 

weaves tlie thread, or Lachesis, when she cuts it. 
In the hour of battle, I have heard the Prince of 
Savoy's officers say, the Prince became possessed 
with a sort of warlike fury ; his eyes lighted up ; 
he rushed hither and thither, raging ; he shrieked 
curses and encouragement, yelling and harking 
his bloody war-dogs on, and himself always at 
the first of the hunt. Our Duke was as calm at 
the mouth of the cannon as at the door of a 
drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have been 
the great m,an he was had he had a heart either 
for love or hatred, or pity or fear, or regret or 
remorse. He achieved the highest deed of dar- 
ing, or deepest calculation of thought, as he per- 
formed the very meanest action of which a man 
is capable ; told a lie, or cheated a fond woman, 
or robbed a poor beggar of a half -penny with a 
like awful serenity and equal capacity of the high- 
est and lowest acts of our nature. 

His qualities were pretty well known in the 
army, where there were parties of all politics, and 
of plenty of shrewdness and wit ; but there ex- 
isted such a perfect confidence in him, as the first 
captain of the world, and such a faith and admira- 
tion in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the 
very men whom he notoriously cheated of their 
pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured (for he 
used all men, great and small, that came near 
him, as his instruments alike, and took something 
of theirs, either some quality or some property — 



128 STRAY MOMENTS WITH TnACKERAY. 

the blood of a soldier, it might be, or a jeweled 
hat, or a hundred thousand crowns from a king, 
or a portion out of a starving sentinel's three far- 
things ; or — when he was young — a kiss from a 
woman, and the gold chain off her neck, taking 
all he could from woman or man, and having, as 
I said, this of the godlike in him, that he could 
see a hero perish or a sparrow fall with the same 
amount of sympathy for either. Not that he had 
no tears ; he could always order up this reserve 
at the proper moment to battle ; he could draw 
upon tears or smiles alike, and whenever need was 
for using this cheap coin ; he would cringe to a 
shoeblack, as he would flatter a minister or a 
monarch ; be haughty, be -humble, threaten, re- 
pent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you, when- 
ever he saw occasion) ; but yet, those of the army 
who knew him best and had suffered most from 
him, admired him most of all ; and as he rode 
along the lines to battle, or galloped up in the 
nick of time to a battalion reeling from before 
the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men and 
officers got new courage as they saw the splendid 
calm of his face, and felt that his will made them 
irresistible. 

After the great victory of Blenheim the en- 
thusiasm of the army for the Duke, even of his 
bitterest personal enemies in it, amounted to a 
sort of rage — nay, the very officers who cursed 
him in their hearts were among the most frantic 



RICHARD STEELE. 129 

to cheer him. Who could refuse his meed of ad- 
miration to such a victory and such a victor ? Not 
he who writes. A man may profess to be ever so 
much a philosopher, but he who fought on that 
day must feel a thrill of pride as he recalls it. — 
Henry Esmond. 

EICIIAED STEELE. 

\Harry Esmond is a page at Castlewood^ when 
the house is seized by a company of troopers on 
suspicion that the inmates are concerned in a 
plot for the restoration of James II. Steele is 
one of the soldiers, and is called in to interpret 
some documents written in a foreign language, 
which neither the chptain of the troopers nor 
a lawyer can translate. Esmond has already 
translated them, hut is mistrusted.^ 

" Let's have in Dick the Scholar," cried Cap- 
tain Westbury, laughing ; and he called to a 
trooper out of the window, " Ho, Dick, come in 
here and construe." 

A thick-set soldier with a square good-humored 
face came in at the summons, saluting his officer. 

"Tell us what is this, Dick," says the law- 
yer. 

"My name is Steele, sir," says the soldier. 
" I may be Dick for my friends, but I don't name 
gentlemen of your cloth among them." 

" Well then, Steele." 

"Mr. Steele, sir, if you please. When you 
9 



130 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

address a gentleman of his Majesty's Horse 
Guards, be pleased not to be so familiar." 

" I didn't know, sir," said tlie lawyer. 

"How should you? I take it you are not 
accustomed to meet with gentlemen," says the 
trooper. 

" Hold thy prate, and read that bit of paper," 
says Westbury. 

" 'Tis Latin," says Dick, glancing up and again 
saluting his officer, " and from a sermon of Mr. 
Cudworth's," and he translated the words pretty 
much as Henry Esmond had rendered them. 

Dick the Scholar afterward took Harry Es- 
mond under his special protection, and would 
examine him in his humanizes, and talk to him 
both of French and Latin, in which tongues the 
lad found, and his new friend was willing enough 
to acknowledge, that he was even more proficient 
than Scholar Dick. Hearing that he had learned 
them from a Jesuit, in the praise of whom and 
whose goodness Harry was never tired of speak- 
ing, Dick, rather to the boy's surprise, who began 
to have an early shrewdness, like many children 
bred up alone, showed a great deal of theological 
science and knowledge of the points at issue be- 
tween the two churches ; so that he and Harry 
would have hours of controversy together, in 
which the boy was certainly worsted by the argu- 
ments of this singular trooper. " I am no com- 
mon soldier," Dick would say, and indeed it wa8 



RICHARD STEELE. 131 

easy to see by his learning, breeding, and many 
accomplishments that he was not — " I am of one 
of the most ancient families in the empire ; I 
have had my education at a famous school, and a 
famous university ; I learned my first rudiments 
of Latin near to Smithfield, in London, where the 
martyrs were roasted." 

"You hanged as many of ours," interposed 
Harry ; " and for the matter of persecution, Fa- 
ther Holt \^IIarry^s precejytor^ told me that a young 
gentleman of Edinburgh, eighteen years of age, 
student at the college there, was hanged for 
heresy only last year, though he recanted, and 
solemnly asked pardon for his errors." 

" Faith ! there has been too much persecution 
on both sides ; but 'twas you taught us." 

" Nay, 'twas the Pagans began it," cried the lad, 
and began to instance a number of saints of the 
Church, from the protomartyr downward — " this 
one's fire went out under him ; that one's oil 
cooled in the caldron ; at a third holy head the 
executioner chopped three times, and it would not 
come off. Show us martyrs in your Church for 
whom such miracles have been done." 

" Nay," says the trooper gravely, " the miracles 
of the first three centuries belong to my Church 
as well as yours. Master Papist," and then added, 
with something of a smile upon his countenance 
and a queer look at Harry — " And yet, my little 
catechiser, I have sometimes thought about those 



132 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

mii-acles that there was not much good in them, 
since the victim's head always finished by coming 
off at the third or fourth chop, and the caldron, if 
it did not boil one day, boiled the next. How- 
beit, in our times, the Church has lost that ques- 
tionable advantage of respites. There was never 
a shower to put out Ridley's fire, nor an angel to 
turn the edge of Campion's axe. The rack tore 
the limbs of Southwell the Jesuit and Sympson 
the Protestant alike. For faith everywhere mul- 
titudes die willingly enough. I have read in Mon- 
sieur Rycault's History of the Turks, of thousands 
of Mahomet's followers rushing upon death in bat- 
tle as upon certain Paradise ; and in the Great 
Mogul's dominions people fling themselves by 
hundreds under the cars of the idols annually ; 
and the widow^s burn themselves on their hus- 
bands' bodies, as 'tis well known. 'Tis not the 
dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry 
— men of every nation have done that — 'tis the 
living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my 
cost," he added, with a sigh. "And, ah!" he 
added, " my poor lad, I am not strong enough to 
convince thee by my life — though to die for my 
religion would give me the greatest of joys — but 
I had a dear friend in Magdalen College in Oxford. 
I wish Joe Addison were here to convince thee, 
as he quickly could, for I think he's a match for 
the whole College of Jesuits ; and what's more, 
in his life too. — I had a thought of wearing the 



RICHARD STEELE. 133 

black coat (but was ashamed of my life, you see, 
and took to this sorry red one). — I have often 
thought of Joe Addison. In that very sermon of 
Dr. Cudworth's, which your priest was quoting 
from, and which suffered martyrdom in the bra- 
zier," Dick added, with a smile, " Dr. Cudworth 
says, * A good conscience is the best looking-glass 
of heaven ' — and there's a serenity in my friend's 
face which always reflects it ; I wish you could 
see him, Harry." 

" Did he do you a great deal of good ? " asked 
the lad, simply. 

" He might have done," said the other — " at 
least he taught me to see and approve better 
things. *Tis my own fault, deteriora sequV 

" You seem very good," the boy said. 

" I'm not what I seem, alas ! " answered the 
trooper ; and, indeed, as it turned out, poor Dick 
told the truth, for that very night, at supper in 
the hall, where the gentlemen of the troop took 
their repasts, and passed most part of their days 
dicing and smoking of tobacco, and singing and 
cursing over the Castlewood ale, Harry Esmond 
found Dick the Scholar in a woful state of drunk- 
enness. He hiccoughed out a sermon ; and his 
laughing companions bade him sing a hymn, on 
which Dick, swearing he would run the scoun- 
drel through the body who insulted his religion, 
made for his sword, which was hanging on the 
wall, and fell down flat on the floor under it. 



134 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

saying to Harry, who ran forward to helji him, 
"Ah, little Papist, I wish Joseph Addison was 
here." 

During the stay of the soldiers in Castlewood, 
honest Dick the Scholar was the constant com- 
panion of the lonely little orphan lad, Harry Es- 
mond ; and they read together, and they played 
bowls together, and when the other troopers or 
their officers, who were free-spoken over their 
cups (as was the way of that day, when neither 
men nor women were over nice), talked unbecom- 
ingly of their amours and gallantries before the 
child, Dick, who very likely was setting the whole 
company laughing, would stop their jokes with a 
maxima dehetur pwer2s reverentia, and once of- 
fered to lug out against another trooper called 
Hulking Tom, who wanted to ask Harry Esmond 
a ribald question. 

Also Dick, seeing that the child had, as he 
said, a sensibility above his years, and a great 
and praiseworthy discretion, confided to Harry 
his love for a vintner's daughter, near to the Toll- 
yard, Westminster, whom Dick addressed as Sac- 
charissa in many verses of his composition, and 
without whom, he said, it would be impossible 
that he could continue to live. He vowed this 
a thousand times in a day, though Harry smiled 
to see the love-lorn swain had his health and 
appetite as well as the most heart-whole trooper 



RICHARD STEELE. 135 

in the regiment ; and he swore Harry to secrecy 
too, which vow the lad religiously kept, until he 
found that officers and privates were all taken 
into Dick's confidence, and had the benefit of his 
verses. And it must be owned, likewise, that, 
while Dick was sighing after Saccharissa in Lon- 
don, he had consolations in the country ; for there 
came a wench out of Castlewood village, who had 
washed his linen, and who cried sadly when she 
heard he was gone, and without paying her bill, 
too, which Harry Esmond took upon himself to 
discharge by giving the girl a silver pocket-piece, 
which Scholar Dick had presented to him, when, 
with many embraces and prayers for his pros- 
perity, Dick parted from him, the garrison of Cas- 
tlewood being ordered away. Dick the Scholar 
said he would never forget his young friend, nor, 
indeed, did he ; and Harry was sorry when the 
kind soldiers vacated Castlewood, looking for- 
ward with no small anxiety (for care and solitude 
had made him thoughtful beyond his years) to his 
fate when the new lord and lady of the house 
came to live there. 

[/SteelCy like many a better man, united him- 
self to a shreic, and loith her attended a ball one 
evening, at which Mr. St. John, the Secretary of 
State, was present. She was ignorant, and, being 
spohen of as Steele^s mistress, took immediate 
wnbrage.l 



136 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

" Mistress ! upon my word, sir ! " cries the 
lady. "If you mean me, sir, I would have you 
know that I am the Captain's wife." 

" Sure, we all know it," answers Mr. St. John, 
keeping his countenance very gravely ; and Steele 
broke in, saying, " 'Twas not about Mrs. Steele 
I wrote that paper — though I am sure she is 
worthy of any compliment I can pay her — but of 
the Lady Elizabeth Hastings." 

" I hear Mr. Addison is equally famous as a 
wit and a poet," says Mr. St. John. " Is it true 
that his hand is to be found in your * Tatler,' 
Mr. Steele ? " 

" Whether 'tis the sublime or the humorous, 
no man can come near him," cries Steele. 

" A fig, Dick, for your Mr. Addison ! " cries 
out his lady ; " a gentleman who gives himself 
such airs and holds his head so high now. I 
hope your ladyship thinks as I do : I can't bear 
those very fair men with white eyelashes — a 
black man for me." (All the black men at table 
applauded and made Mrs. Steele a bow for this 
compliment.) "As for this Mr. Addison," she went 
on, " he comes to dine with the Captain sometimes, 
never says a word to me, and then they walk 
upstairs, both tipsy, to a dish of tea. I remem- 
ber your Mr. Addison when he had but one coat 
to his back, and that with a patch at the elbow." 

" Indeed — a patch at the elbow ! You interest 
me," says Mr. St. John. " Tis charming to hear 



RICHARD STEELE. 137 

of one man of letters from the charming wife of 
another." 

" La ! I could tell you ever so much about 
'em," continues the voluble lady. "What do 
you think the Captain has got now ? — a little 
hunchback fellow — a little hop-o'-my-thumb crea- 
ture that he calls a poet — a little Popish brat ! " 

" Hush, there are two in the room," whispers 
her companion. 

" Well, I call him Popish because his name is 
Pope," says the lady. *^'Tis only my joking 
way. And this little dwarf of a fellow has writ- 
ten a pastoral poem — all about shepherds and 
shepherdesses, you know." 

" A shepherd should have a little crook," says 
my mistress, laughing, from her end of the table ; 
on which Mrs. Steele said " she did not know, but 
the Captain brought home this queer little crea- 
ture when she was in bed with her first boy, and it 
was a mercy he had come no sooner ; and Dick 
raved about his geoiics, and was always raving 
about some nonsense or other." 

" Which of the * Tatlers ' do you prefer, Mrs. 
Steele ? " asked Mr. St. John. 

"I never read but one, and think it all a 
pack of rubbish, sir," says the lady. " Such stuff 
about Bickerstaffe, and Distaff, and Quarterstaff, 
as it all is. There's the Captain going on still 
with the Burgundy ; I know he'll be tipsy before 
he stops — Captain Steele ! " 



138 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

"I drink to your eyes, my dear," says the 
Captain, who seemed to think his wife charming, 
and to receive as genuine all the satiric compli- 
ments which Mr. St. John paid her. — Henry Es- 
mond. 

Dick set about almost all the undertakings 
of his life with inadequate means, and as he 
took and furnished a house with the most gener- 
ous intentions toward his friends, the most tender 
gallantry toward his wife, and with this only 
drawback, that he had not the wherewithal to 
pay the rent when quarter-day came — so, in his 
life he proposed to himself the most magnificent 
schemes of virtue, forbearance, public and private 
good, and the advancement of his own and the 
national religion ; but when he had to pay for 
these articles — so difficult to purchase and so 
costly to maintain — poor Dick's money was not 
forthcoming ; and when Virtue called with her 
little bill, Dick made a shuffling excuse that he 
could not see her that morning, having a headache 
from being tipsy overnight ; or when stern Duty 
rapped at the door with his account, Dick was 
absent and not ready to pay. He was shirking at 
the tavern ; or had some particular business (of 
somebody's else) at the ordinary ; or he was in 
hiding, or, worse than in hiding, in the lock-up 
house. What a situation for a man ! — for a phi- 
lanthropist — for a lover of right and truth — for 



RICHARD STEELE. 139 

a magnificent designer and schemer ! Not to 
dare to look in the face the religion which he 
adored and which he had offended ; to have to 
shirk down back lanes and alleys, so as to avoid 
the friend whom he loved and who had trusted 
him — to have the house which he had intended 
for his wife, whom he loved passionately, and for 
her ladyship's company Avhich he wished to enter- 
tain splendidly, in the possession of a bailiff's 
man, with a crowd of little creditors — grocers, 
butchers, and small-coal men, lingering round the 
door with their bills, and jeering at him. Alas ! 
for poor Dick Steele ! For nobody else, of course. 
There is no man or woman in our time who makes 
fine projects and gives them up from idleness or 
want of means. When Duty calls upon W5, we 
no doubt are always at home, and ready to pay 
that grim tax-gatherer. "When we are stricken 
with remorse and promise reform, we keep our 
promise, and are never angry, or idle, or extrava- 
gant any more. There are no chambers in our 
hearts destined for family friends and affections, 
and ^now occupied by some Sin's emissary and 
bailiff in possession. There are no little sins, 
shabby peccadilloes, importunate remembrances, 
or disappointed holders of our promises to reform, 
hovering at our steps, or knocking at our door ! 
Of course not. We are living in the nineteenth 
century, and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got 
up again, and got into jail and out again, and 



140 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

Binned and repented ; and loved and suffered ; 
and lived and died scores of years ago. Peace 
be with him ! Let us think gently of one who 
was so gentle ; let us speak kindly of one whose 
own breast exuberated with human kindness. — 
Lectures on the Miglish Humorists. 

ADDISON. 

{^Steele and Henry Esmond^ having been din- 
ing at the Guards* table hi St. Jameses, meet the 
author of the " Campaign.'*^'] 

Quitting the Guard-table one sunny afternoon, 
when by chance Dick had a sober fit upon him, he 
and his friend were making their way down Ger- 
main Street, and Dick all of a sudden left his com- 
panion's arm, and ran after a gentleman who was 
poring over a folio volume at the bookshop near 
to St. James's Church. He was a fair, tall man, 
in a snuff-colored suit, with a plain sword, very 
sober and almost shabby in appearance — at least 
when compared with Captain Steele, who loved 
to adorn his jolly round person with the finest of 
clothes, and shone in scarlet and gold lace. The 
Captain rushed up, then, to the student of the 
bookstall, took him in his arms, hugged him, and 
would have kissed him — for Dick was always 
hugging and bussing his friends — but the other 
stepped back with a flush on his pale face, seem- 
ing to decline this public manifestation of Steele's 
regard. 



ADDISON. 141 

" My dearest Joe, where hast thou hidden thy- 
self this age?" cries the Captain, still holding 
both his friend's hands. " I have been languish- 
ing for thee this fortnight." 

"A fortnight is not an age, Dick," says the 
other, very good-humoredly. (He had light-blue 
eyes, extraordinary bright, and a face perfectly 
regular and handsome, like a tinted statue.) 
" And I have been hiding myself — where do you 
think?" 

" What ! not across the water, my dear Joe ? " 
says Steele, with a look of great alarm : " thou 
knowest I have always — " 

" No," says his friend, interrupting him with a 
smile ; "we are not come to such straits as that, 
Dick. I have been hiding, sir, at a place where 
people never think of finding you — at my own 
lodgings, whither I am going to smoke a pipe 
now, and drink a glass of sack ; will your honor 
come?" 

" Harry Esmond, come hither," cries out Dick. 
" Thou hast heard me talk over and over again 
of my dearest Joe, my guardian angel." 

" Indeed," says Mr. Esmond, with a bow, " it 
is not from you only that I have learned to ad- 
mire Mr. Addison. We loved good poetry at 
Cambridge, as well as at Oxford ; and I have 
some of yours by heart, though I have put on 
a red coat — * O qui canoro blandius Orpheo 
vocale ducis carmen ' ; shall I go on, sir ? " says 



142 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

Mr. Esmond, who indeed had read and loved 
the charming Latin poems of Mr. Addison, as 
every scholar of that time knew and admired 
them. 

*' This is Captain Esmond, who was at Blen- 
heim," says Steele. 

" Lieutenant Esmond," says the other, with a 
low bow ; " at Mr. Addison's service." 

"I have heard of you," says Mr. Addison, 
with a smile ; as, indeed, everybody about town 
had heard that unlucky story about Esmond's 
dowager aunt and the Duchess. 

" We are going to the George, to take a bot- 
tle before the play," says Steele ; ** wilt thou be 
one, Joe ? " 

Mr. Addison said his own lodgings were hard 
by, where he was still rich enough to give a good 
bottle of wine to his friends ; and invited the two 
gentlemen to his apartment in the Haymarket, 
whither we accordingly went. 

" I shall get credit with my landlady," says 
he, with a smile, "when she sees two such fine 
gentlemen as you come up my stair." And he 
politely made his visitors welcome to his apart- 
ment, which was indeed but a shabby one, though 
no grandee of the land could receive his guests 
with a more perfect and courtly grace than this 
gentleman. A frugal dinner, consisting of a slice 
of meat and a penny loaf, was awaiting the owner 
of the lodgings. "My wine is better than my 



ADDISON. 143 

meat," says Mr, Addison ; " my Lord Halifax 
sent me the Burgundy." And he set a bottle 
and glasses before his friends, and ate his simple 
dinner in a very few minutes ; after which the 
three fell to, and began to drink. "You see," 
says Mr. Addison, pointing to his writing-table, 
whereon was a map of the action at Hochstedt, 
and several other gazettes and pamphlets relating 
to the battle, "that I, too, am busy about your 
affairs. Captain. I am engaged as a poetical ga- 
zetteer, to say truth, and am writing a poem on 
the campaign." 

So Esmond, at the request of his host, told him 
what he knew about the famous battle, drew the 
river on the table aliquo mero, and with the aid 
of some bits of tobacco-pipe, showed the advance 
of the left wing, where he had been engaged. 

A sheet or two of the verses lay already on the 
table beside our bottles and glasses, and Dick, 
having plentifully refreshed himself from the lat- 
ter, took up the pages of manuscript, written out 
with scarce a blot or correction, in the author's 
slim, neat handwriting, and began to read there- 
from with great emphasis and volubility. At 
pauses of the verse, the enthusiastic reader stopped 
and fired off a great salvo of applause. 

Esmond smiled at the enthusiasm of Addison's 
friend. "You are like the German Burghers," 
says he, " and the Princes on the Moselle ; when 
our army came to a halt, they always sent a depu- 



144 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

tation to compliment the chief, and fired a salute 
with all their artillery from their walls." 

"And drank the great chief's health after- 
ward, did not they ? " says Captain Steele, gayly 
filling up a bumper ; he never was tardy at that 
sort of acknowledgment of a friend's merit. 

" And the Duke, since you will have me act his 
Grace's part," says Mr. Addison, with a smile and 
something of a blush, " pledged his friends in re- 
turn. Most Serene Elector of Covent Garden, I 
drink to your Highness's health," and he filled 
himself a glass. Joseph required scarce more 
pressing than Dick to that sort of amusement ; 
but the wine never seemed at all to fluster Mr. 
Addison's brains ; it only unloosed his tongue ; 
whereas Captain Steele's head and speech were 
quite overcome by a single bottle. 

No matter what the verses were, and, to say 
truth, Mr. Esmond found some of them more than 
indifferent, Dick's enthusiasm for his chief never 
faltered, and in every line from Addison's pen 
Steele found a master-stroke. By the time Dick 
had come to that part of the poem wherein the 
bard describes, as blandly as though he were re- 
cording a dance at the opera, or a harmless bout 
of bucolic cudgeling at a village fair, that bloody 
and ruthless part of our campaign, with the re- 
membrance whereof every soldier who bore a part 
in it must sicken with shame — when we were or- 
dered to ravage and lay waste the Elector's coun- 



ADDISON. 145 

try ; and with fire and murder, elaughter and 
crime, a great part of his dominions were over- 
run — when Dick came to the lines : 

"In vengeance roused the soldier fills his hand 
With sword and fire, and ravages the land, 
In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn, 
A thousand villages to ashes turn. 
To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat, 
And mixed with bellowing herds confusedly bleat. 
Their trembling lords the common shade partake, 
And cries of infants sound in every brake. 
The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands, 
Loath to obey his leader's just commands. 
The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed, 
To see his just commands so well obeyed ; " 

by this time wine and friendship had brought 
poor Dick to a perfectly maudlin state, and he 
hiccoughed out the last line with a tenderness 
that set one of his auditors a laughing. 

"I admire the license of you poets," says Es- 
mond to Mr. Addison. (Dick, after reading of 
the verses, was fain to go off, insisting on kissing 
his two dear friends before his departure, and 
reeling away with his periwig over his eyes.) "I 
admire your art : the murder of the campaign is 
done to military music, like a battle at the opera, 
and the virgins shriek in harmony as our victori- 
rious grenadiers march into their villages. Do 
you know what a scene it was ? " (by this time, 
perhaps, the wine had warmed Mr. Esmond's 
10 



146 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

head too) — " what a triumph you are celebrating? 
what scenes of shame and horror were enacted, 
over which the commander's genius presided, as 
calm as though he didn't belong to our sphere ? 
You talk of the ' listening soldier fixed in sorrow,' 
the * leader's grief swayed by generous pity ' : to 
my belief the leader cared no more for bleating 
flocks than he did for infants' cries, and many of 
our ruffians butchered one or the other with equal 
alacrity. I was ashamed of my trade when I saw 
those horrors perpetrated, which came under ev- 
ery man's eyes. You hew out of your polished 
verses a stately image of smiling victory ; I tell 
you 'tis an uncouth, distorted, savage idol ; hid- 
eous, bloody, and barbarous. The rites performed 
before it are shocking to think of. You great 
poets should show it as it is — ugly and horrible, 
not beautiful and serene. Oh, sir, had you made 
the campaign, believe me, you never would have 
sung it so ! " 

During this little outbreak, Mr. Addison was 
listening, smoking out of his long pipe, and smil- 
ing very placidly. " What would you have ? " 
says he. " In our polished days, and according 
to the rules of art, 'tis impossible that the Muse 
should depict tortures or begrime her hands with 
the horrors of war. These are indicated rather 
than described ; as in the Greek tragedies, that, 
I dare say, you have read (and, sure, there can 
be no more elegant specimens of composition), 



ADDISON. 147 

Agamemnon is slain, or Medea's cliildi-en de- 
stroyed, away from the scene ; the chorus occu- 
pying the stage and singing of the action to pa- 
thetic music. Something of this I attempt, my 
dear sir, in my humble way : 'tis a panegyric I 
mean to write, and not a satire. Were I to sing 
as you would have me, the town would tear the 
poet in pieces, and burn his book by the hands of 
the common hangman. Do you not use tobacco ? 
Of all the weeds grown on earth, sure the nico- 
tian is the most soothing and salutary. We must 
paint our great Duke," Mr. Addison went on, 
" not as a man, which no doubt he is, with weak- 
nesses like the rest of us, but as a hero. 'Tis in a 
triumph, not a battle, that your humble servant is 
riding his sleek Pegasus. We college poets trot, 
you know, on very easy nags ; it hath been, time 
out of mind, part of the poet's profession to cele- 
brate the actions of heroes in verse, and to sing 
the deeds which you men of war perform. I 
must follow the rules of my art, and the compo- 
sition of such a strain as this must be harmonious 
and majestic, not familiar, or too near the vulgar 
truth. Si par V a licet: if Virgil could invoke the 
divine Augustus, a humbler poet from the banks 
of the Isis may celebrate a victory and a con- 
queror of our own nation, in whose triumphs 
every Briton has a share, and whose glory and 
genius contribute to every citizen's individual 
honor. When hath there been, since our Henrys' 



148 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

and Edwards' days, such a great feat of arms as 
that from which you yourself have brought away 
marks of distinction ? If 'tis in my power to sing 
that song worthily I will do so, and be thankful 
to my Muse. If I fail as a poet, as a Briton, at 
least, I will show my loyalty, and fling up my cap 
and huzza for the conqueror : 

" ' Rheni pacator et Istri 
Omnis in hoc uno variis discordia cessit 
Ordinibus ; laatatur eques, plauditque senator, 
Yotaque patricio certant plebeia favori.' " 

" There were as brave men on that field," says 
Mr. Esmond (who never could be made to love 
the Duke of Marlborough, nor to forget those 
stories which he used to hear in his youth regard- 
ing that great chief's selfishness and treachery) 
— " there were men at Blenheim as good as the 
leader, whom neither knights nor senators ap- 
plauded, nor voices plebeian or patrician favored, 
and who lie there forgotten, under the clods. 
What poet is there to sing them ? " 

" To sing the gallant souls of heroes sent to 
Hades ! " says Mr. Addison, with a smile. " Would 
you celebrate them all ? If I may venture to ques- 
tion anything in such an admirable work, the cata- 
logue of the ships in Homer hath always appeared 
to me as somewhat wearisome ; what had the 
poem been, supposing the writer had chronicled 
the names of captains, lieutenants, rank and file ? 



ADDISON. 149 

One of tlie greatest of a great man's qualities is 
success ; 'tis the result of all the others ; 'tis a 
latent power in him which compels the favors of 
the gods, and subjugates fortune. Of all his 
gifts I admire that one in the great Marlborough. 
To be brave ? every man is brave. But in being 
victorious, as he is, I fancy there is something 
divine. In presence of the occasion, the great 
soul of the leader shines out, and the god is con- 
fessed. Death itself respects him, and passes by 
him to lay others low. War and carnage flee be- 
fore him to ravage other parts of the field, as 
Hector from before the divine Achilles. You say 
he hath no pity ; no more have the gods, who are 
above it, and superhuman. The fainting battle 
gathers strength at his aspect ; and, wherever he 
rides, victory charges with him." 

A couple of days after, when Mr. Esmond re- 
visited his poetic friend, he found his thought, 
struck out in the fervor of conversation, improved 
and shaped into those famous lines which are in 
truth the noblest in the poem of the " Campaign." 
As the two gentlemen sat engaged in talk, Mr. 
Addison solacing himself with his customary pipe, 
the little maid-servant that waited on his lodging 
came up, preceding a gentleman in fine laced 
clothes, that had evidently been figuring at Court 
or a great man's levee. The courtier coughed a 
little at the smoke of the pipe, and looked around 
the room curiously, which was shabby enough, as 



150 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

was the owner in his worn snuff-colored suit and 
plain tie-wig. 

" How goes on the magnum opus, Mr. Addi- 
son ? " says the Court gentleman on looking down 
at the papers that were on the table. 

" We were but now over it," says Addison (the 
greatest courtier in the land could not have a 
more splendid politeness, or greater dignity of 
manner) ; " here is the plan," says he, " on the 
table : hac ihat Simois, here ran the little river 
Nebel — hie est Sigeia tellus, here are Tallard's 
quarters, at the bowl of this pipe, at the attack 
of which Captain Esmond was present. I have 
the honor to introduce him to Mr. Boyle ; and Mr. 
Esmond was but now depicting aliquo proelia 
m^ixta mero, when you came in." In truth, the 
two gentlemen had been so engaged when the 
visitor arrived, and Addison, in his smiling way, 
speaking of Mr. Webb, Colonel of Esmond's regi- 
ment (who commanded a brigade in the action, 
and greatly distinguished himself there), was la- 
menting that he could find never a suitable rhyme 
for Webb, otherwise the brigadier should have 
had a place in the poet's verses. " And for you, 
you are but a lieutenant," says Addison, " and the 
Muse can't occupy herself with any gentleman 
under the rank of a field-officer." 

Mr. Boyle was all impatient to hear, saying 
that my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Halifax 
were equally anxious ; and Addison, blushing, 



ADDISON. 151 

began reading of his verses, and, I suspect, knew 
their weak parts as well as the most critical hearer. 
When he came to the lines describing the angel 
that 

"Inspired repulsed battalions to engage 
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage," 

he read with great animation, looking at Esmond, 
as much as to say, " You know where that simile 
came from — from our talk, and our bottle of Bur- 
gundy, the other day." 

The poet's two hearers were caught with en- 
thusiasm, and applauded the verses with all their 
might. The gentleman of the Court sprang up 
in great delight. "Not a word more, my dear 
sir," says he. " Trust me with the papers ; I'll 
defend them with my life. Let me read them 
over to my Lord Treasurer, whom I am appointed 
to see in half an hour. I venture to promise the 
verses shall lose nothing by my reading, and then, 
sir, we shall see whether Lord Halifax has a right 
to complain that his friend's pension is no longer 
paid." And, without more ado, the courtier in 
lace seized the manuscript pages, placed them in 
his breast with his ruffled hand over his heart, 
executed a most gracious wave of the hat with 
the disengaged hand, and smiled and bowed out 
of the room, leaving an odor of pomander behind 
him. 

" Does not the chamber look quite dark," says 



152 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

Addison, surveying it, " after the glorious appear- 
ance and disappearance of that gracious messen- 
ger ? Why, he illuminated the whole room. Your 
scarlet, Mr. Esmond, will bear any light ; but this 
threadbare old coat of mine, how very worn it 
looked under the glare of that splendor ! I won- 
der whether they will do anything for me," he 
continued. "When I came out of Oxford into 
the world, my patrons promised me great things ; 
and you see where their promises have landed me, 
in a lodging up two pair of stairs, with a sixpenny 
dinner from the cook's shop. Well, I suppose 
this promise will go after the others, and fortune 
will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any time 
these seven years. * I puff the prostitute away,' " 
says he, smiling, and blowing a cloud out of his 
pipe. " There is no hardship in poverty, Esmond, 
that is not bearable ; no hardship even in honest 
dependence that an honest man may not put up 
with. I came out of the lap of Alma Mater, 
puffed up with her praises of me, and thinking to 
make a figure in the world with the parts and 
learning which had got me no small name in our 
College. The world is the ocean, and Isis and 
Charwell are but little drops, of which the sea 
takes no account. My reputation ended a mile 
beyond Maudlin Tower ; no one took note of me ; 
and I learned this, at least, to bear up against evil 
fortune with a cheerful heart. Friend Dick hath 
made a figure in the world, and has passed me in 



ADDISON. 153 

the race long ago. What matters a little name or 
a little fortune ? There is no fortune that a phi- 
losopher can not endure. I have been not un- 
known as a scholar, and yet forced to live by turn- 
ing bear-leader, and teaching a boy to spell. What 
then ? The life was not pleasant, but possible — 
the bear was bearable. Should this venture fail, 
I will go back to Oxford ; and some day, when 
you are a general, you shall iind me a curate in a 
cassock and bands, and I shall welcome your hon- 
or to my cottage in the country, and to a mug of 
penny ale. 'Tis not poverty that's the hardest to 
bear, or the least happy lot in life," says Mr. Ad- 
dison, shaking the ash out of his pipe. " See, my 
pipe is smoked out. Shall we have another bot- 
tle ? I have still a couple in the cupboard, and of 
the right sort. No more ? — let us go abroad and 
take a turn on the Mall, or look in at the theatre 
and see Dick's comedy. 'Tis not a masterpiece of 
wit ; but Dick is a good fellow, though he does 
not set the Thames on fire." 

Within a month after this day, Mr. Addison's 
ticket had come up a prodigious prize in the lot- 
tery of life. All the town was in an uproar of 
admiration of his poem, the " Campaign," which 
Dick Steele was spouting at every coffee-house 
in Whitehall and Covent Garden. The wits on 
the other side of Temple Bar saluted him at once 
as the greatest poet the world had seen for ages ; 
the people huzzaed for Marlborough and for Ad- 



154 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

dison ; and, more than this, the party in power 
provided for the meritorious poet, and Mr. Addi- 
son got the appointment of Commissioner of Ex- 
cise, which the famous Mr. Locke vacated, and 
rose from this place to other dignities and honors ; 
his prosperity from henceforth to the end of his life 
being scarce ever interrupted. But I doubt wheth- 
er he was not happier in his garret in the Hay- 
market than ever he was in his splendid palace at 
Kensington ; and I believe the fortune that came 
to him in the shape of the countess his wife was no 
better than a shrew and a vixen. — Henry Esmond. 

Is the glory of heaven to be sung only by gen- 
tlemen in black coats ? Must the truth be only 
expounded in gown and surplice, and out of those 
two vestments can nobody preach it ? Commend 
me to this dear preacher without orders — this par- 
son in the tie-wig. When this man looks from 
the world, whose weaknesses he describes so be- 
nevolently, up to the heaven which shines over us 
all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up 
with a more serene rapture ; a human intellect 
thrilling with a purer love and adoration than Jo- 
seph Addison's. Listen to him ; from your child- 
hood you have known the verses ; but who can 
hear their sacred music without love and awe ? 

" Soon as the evening shades prevail, 
The moon takes up the wondrous tale, 



ADDISON. 155 

And nightly to the listening earth 
Repeats the story of her birth ; 
And all the stars that round her burn, 
And all the planets in their turn, 
Confirm the tidings as they roll, 
And spread the truth from pole to pole. 
What though, in solemn silence, all 
Move round this dark terrestrial ball ; 
What though no real voice nor sound 
Among their radiant orbs be found ; 
In reason's ear they all rejoice, 
And utter forth a glorious voice. 
For ever singing, as they shine, 
The hand that made us is divine." 

It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. 
They shine out like a great deep calm. When he 
turns to heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man's 
mind ; and his face lights up from it with a glory 
of thanks and prayer. His sense of religion stirs 
through his whole being. In the fields, in the 
town, looking at the birds in the trees, at the 
children in the streets, in the morning or in the 
moonlight, over his books in his own room, in a 
happy party at a country merry-making or a town 
assembly, good will and peace to God's creatures, 
and love and awe of Him who made them, fill 
his pure heart and shine from his kind face. If 
Swift's life was the most wretched, I think Addi- 
son's was one of the most enviable. A life pros- 
perous and beautiful — a calm death — an immense 
fame and affection afterward for his happy and 



156 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

spotless name. — Lectures 07i the £Jnglish Humor- 
ists. 

SWIFT. 

Of the famous wits of that age, who have 
rendered Queen Anne's reign ilhistrious, and 
whose works will be in all Englishmen's hands in 
ages yet to come, Mr. Esmond saw many, but at 
public places chiefly, never having a great inti- 
macy with any of them, except with honest Dick 
Steele and Mr. Addison, who parted company 
with Esmond, however, when that gentleman be- 
came a declared Tory, and lived on close terms 
with the leading persons of that party. Addison 
kept himself to a few friends, and very rarely 
opened himself except in their company. A man 
more upright and conscientious than he it was 
not possible to find in public life, or one whose 
conversation was so various, easy, and delightful. 
The pleasantest of the wits I knew were the Doc- 
tors Garth and Arbuthnot, and Mr. Gay, the 
author of " Trivia," the most charming, kind soul 
that ever laughed at a joke or cracked a bottle. 
Mr. Prior I saw, and he was the earthen pot 
swimming with the pots of brass down the stream, 
and always and justly frightened lest he should 
break in the voyage. I met him both at London 
and Paris, where he was performing piteous con- 
gas to the Duke of Shrewsbury, nat having cou- 
rage to support the dignity which his undeniable 
genius and talent had won him, and writing coax- 



SWIFT. 157 

ing letters to Secretary St. John, and thinking 
about his plate and his place, and what on earth 
should become of him should his party go out. 
The famous Mr. Congreve I saw a dozen of times 
at Button's, a splendid wreck of a man, magnifi- 
cently attired, and, though gouty and almost blind, 
bearing a brave face against fortune. 

The great Mr. Pope (of whose prodigious ge- 
nius I have no words to express my admiration) 
was quite a puny lad at this time, appearing sel- 
dom in public places. There were hundreds of 
men, wits, and pretty fellows, frequenting the 
theatres and coffee-houses of that day — whom 
"nunc perscribere longum est." Indeed, I think 
the most brilliant of that sort I ever saw was not 
till fifteen years afterward, when I paid my last 
visit in England, and met young Harry Fielding, 
son of the Fielding that served in Spain, and 
afterward in Flanders with us, and who for fun 
and humor seemed to top them all. As for the 
famous Dr. Swift, I can say of him, " Vidi tan- 
tum." He was in London all these years up to 
the death of the Queen ; and in a hundred public 
places where I saw him, but no more ; he never 
missed Court of a Sunday, where once or twice he 
was pointed out to your grandfather. He would 
have sought me out eagerly enough had I been a 
great man with a title to my name, or a star on 
my coat. At Court the Doctor had no eyes but 
for the very greatest. Lord Treasurer and St. 



158 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

John used to call him Jonathan, and they paid 
him -with this cheap coin for the service they took 
of him. He wrote their lampoons, fought their 
enemies, flogged and bullied in their service, and, 
it must be owned, with a consummate skill and 
fierceness. 'Tis said he hath lost his intellect 
now, and forgotten his wrongs and his rage against 
mankind. I have always thought of him and of 
Marlborough as the two greatest men of that age. 
I have read his books (who doth not know them ?) 
here in our calm woods, and imagine a giant 
to myself as I think of him, a lonely, fallen Pro- 
metheus, groaning as the vulture tears him. Pro- 
metheus I saw, but, when first I ever had any 
words with him, the giant stepped out of a sedan- 
chair in the Poultry, whither he had come with a 
tipsy Irish servant parading before him, who an- 
nounced him, bawling out his Reverence's name, 
while his master below was as yet haggling with 
the chairman. I disliked this Mr. Swift, and heard 
many a story about him, of his conduct to men, 
and his words to women. He could flatter the 
great as much as he could bully the weak, and 
Mr. Esmond, being younger and hotter in that 
day than now, was determined, should he ever 
meet this dragon, not to run away from his teeth 
and his fire. 

[Henry Esmond, having written a paper for 
one of the Tory journals called the ^^ Post- Boy ^"^ 
went one day to correct the proofs, when the 



SWIFT. 159 

famous Dr. Sicift came in. The priyiter^s wife 
had gone to the tavern for her husband, and, 
meanwhile, Esmond engaged himself by drawing 
a picture of a soldier for her dirty little boy, whom 
she had left behind.^ 

" I presume you are the editor of the * Post- 
Boy,' sir ? " says the Doctor, in a grating voice 
that had an Irish twang ; and he looked at the 
Colonel from under his two bushy eyebrows with 
a pair of very clear blue eyes. His complexion 
was muddy, his figure rather fat, his chin double. 
He wore a shabby cassock, and a shabby hat over 
his black wig, and he pulled out a great gold 
watch at which he looks very fierce. 

" I am but a contributor. Dr. Swift," says Es- 
mond, with the little boy still on his knee. He 
was sitting with his back in the window, so that 
the Doctor could not see him. 

" Who told you I was Dr. Swift ! " says the 
Doctor, eying the other very haughtily. 

"Your Reverence's valet bawled out your 
name," says the Colonel. "I should judge you 
brought him from Ireland." 

" And pray, sir, what right have you to judge 
whether my servant came from Ireland or no? 
I want to speak with your employer, Mr. Leach. 
I'll thank ye go fetch him." 

"Where's your papa, Tommy?" asks the 
Colonel of the child, a smutty little wretch in a 
frock. 



160 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

Instead of answering, the child begins to cry ; 
the Doctor's appearance had no doubt frightened 
the poor little imp. 

"Send that squalling little brat about his 
business, and do what I bid ye, sir," says the Doc- 
tor. 

" I must finish the picture first for Tommy," 
says the Colonel, laughing. " Here, Tommy, will 
you have your Pandour with whiskers or with- 
out?" 

" Whisters," says Tommy, quite intent on the 
picture. 

" Who the devil are ye, sir ? " cries the Doctor ; 
" are ye a printer's man or are ye not ? " (he pro- 
nounced it like naught). 

"Your Reverence needn't raise the devil to 
ask who I am," says Colonel Esmond. " Did you 
ever hear of Dr. Faustus, little Tommy ? of Friar 
Bacon, who invented gunpowder, and set the 
Thames on fire ? " 

Mr. Swift turned quite red, almost purple. " I 
did not intend any offense, sir," says he. 

" I dare say, sir, you offended without mean- 
ing," says the other, dryly. 

" Who are ye, sir ? Do you know who I am, 
sir? You are one of the pack of Grub Street 
scribblers that my friend Mr. Secretary hath laid 
by the heels. How dare ye, sir, speak to me in 
this tone ? " cries the Doctor, in a great fume. 

" I beg your honor's humble pardon if I have 



SWIFT. 161 

offended your honor," says Esmond, in a tone of 
great humility. " Rather than be sent to the 
Compter, or be put in the pillory, there's nothing 
I wouldn't do. But Mrs. Leach, the printer's 
lady, told me to mind Tommy while she went for 
her husband to the tavern, and I daren't leave the 
child lest he should fall into the fire ; but if your 
Reverence will hold him — " 

" I take the little beast ! " says the Doctor, 
starting back. " I am engaged to your betters, 
fellow. Tell Mr. Leach that when he makes an 
appointment with Dr. Swift he had best keep it, 
do you hear ? And keep a respectful tongue in 
your head, sir, when you address a person like 
me." 

" I'm but a poor broken-down soldier," says the 
Colonel, " and I've seen better days, though I am 
forced now to turn my hand to writing. We can't 
help our fate, sir." 

" You're the person that Mr. Leach hath spo- 
ken to me of, I presume. Have the goodness to 
speak civilly when you are spoken to ; and tell 
Leach to call at my lodgings in Bury Street, and 
bring the papers with him to-night at ten o'clock. 
And the next time you see me, you'll know me, 
and be civil, Mr. Kemp." 

\^A feio days later Colonel Esmond attended 
a grand dinner given hy General Webb, at lohich 
Sioift is present.'] 

Mr. Esmond went up to the Doctor with a bow 
11 



162 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

and a smile ; " I gave Dr. Swift's message," says 
he, " to the printer ; I hope he brought your pam- 
phlet to your lodgings in time." Indeed, poor 
Leach had come to his house very soon after the 
Doctor left it, being brought away rather tipsy 
from the tavern by his thrifty wife ; and he talked 
of Cousin Swift in a maudlin way, though, of 
course, Mr. Esmond did not allude to this relation- 
ship. The Doctor scowled, blushed, and was much 
confused, and said scarce a word during the whole 
of dinner. A very little stone will sometimes 
knock down these Goliaths of wit, and this one 
Avas often discomfited when met by a man of 
any spirit ; he took his place sulkily, put water in 
his wine that the others drank plentifully, and 
scarce said a word. — Henry Esmond. 

You know, of course, that Swift has had many 
biographers ; his life has been told by the kindest 
and most good-natured of men, Scott, who admires 
but can not bring himself to love him, and by 
stout old Johnson, who, forced to admit him into 
the company of poets, receives the famous Irish- 
man, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of 
surly recognition, scans him from head to foot, 
and passes over to the other side of the street. 
Dr. Wilde, of Dublin, who has written a most in- 
teresting volume on the closing years of Swift's 
life, calls Johnson "the most malignant of his 
biographers " ; it is not easy for an English critic to 



SWIFT. 103 

please Irislimen — perhaps to try and please them. 
And yet Johnson truly admh'es Swift ; Johnson 
does not quarrel with Swift's change of politics, 
or doubt the sincerity of his religion. About the 
famous Stella and Vanessa controversy the Doctor 
does not bear very hardly on Swift ; but he could 
not give the Dean that honest hand of his ; the 
stout old man puts it into his breast, and moves 
off from him. 

Would we have liked to live with him ? That 
is a question which, in dealing with these people's 
works and thinking of their lives and peculiarities, 
every reader of biography must put to himself. 
Would you have liked to be a friend of the great 
Dean ? I should like to have been Shakespeare's 
shoeblack — just to have lived in his house — just 
to have worshiped him — to have run on his er- 
rands, and seen that sweet, serene face. I should 
like as a young man to have lived on Fielding's 
staircase in the Temple, and after helping him up 
to bed perhaps, and opening his door with his latch- 
key, to have shaken hands with him in the morn- 
ing, and heard him talk and crack jokes over his 
breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would 
not give something to pass a night at the club 
with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Bos well, 
Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison's 
companionship and conversation has passed to us 
by fond tradition — but Swift ? If you had been 
his inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect 



164 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

for all persons present, I fear is only very likely), 
his equal in mere social station, he would have 
bullied, scorned, and insulted you ; if, undeterred 
by his great reputation, you had met him like a 
man, he would have quailed before you, and not 
had the pluck to reply, and gone home, and years 
after written a foul epigram about you — watched 
for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you 
with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon. If 
you had been a lord with a blue ribbon, who flat- 
tered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he 
would have been the most delightful company in 
the world. He would have been so manly, so sar- 
castic, so bright, odd, and original, that you might 
think he had no object in view but the indulgence 
of his humor, and that he was the most reckless, 
simple creature in the world. How he would have 
torn your enemies to pieces for you ! and made 
fun of the opposition ! His servility was so bois- 
terous that it looked like independence ; he would 
have done your errands, but with the air of pa- 
tronizing you, and, after fighting your battles 
masked in the street or the press, would have kept 
on his hat before your wife and daughters in the 
drawing-room, content to take that sort of pay for 
his tremendous services as a bravo. 

His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subse- 
quent misanthropy, are ascribed by some pane- 
gyrists to a deliberate conviction of mankind's un- 



SWIFT. 165 

worthiness, and a desire to amend them by casti- 
gating. His youth was bitter, as that of a great 
genius bound down by ignoble ties, and powerless 
in a mean dependence ; his age was bitter, like 
that of a great genius that had fought the battle 
and nearly won it, and lost it, and thought of it 
afterward writhing in a lonely exile. A man may 
attribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused 
by his own fury, or disappointment, or self-will. 
What public man — what statesman projecting a 
coup — what king determined on an invasion of 
his neighbor — what satirist meditating an on- 
slaught on society or an individual, can not give 
a pretext for his move ? There was a French 
General the other day who proposed to march 
into this country, and put it to sack and pillage, in 
revenge for humanity, outraged by our conduct 
at Copenhagen — there is always some excuse for 
men of the aggressive turn. They are of this na- 
ture, war-like, predatory, eager for fight, plunder, 
dominion. As fierce a beak and talon as ever 
struck — as strong a wing as ever beat, belonged 
to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested 
the prey out of his claws, and cut his wings, and 
chained him. One can gaze, and not without awe 
and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the 
bars. 

In a note in his biography, Scott says that his 
friend Dr. Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's 



166 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

Lair, inclosed in a paper by Swift, on which are 
written in the Dean's hand, the words : " Only a 
woman's hair,'''' An instance, says Scott, of the 
Dean's desire to veil his feelings under the mask 
of cynical indifference. 

See the various notions of critics ! Do those 
words indicate indifference or an attempt to hide 
feeling ? Did you ever hear or read four words 
more pathetic ? Only a woman's hair, only love, 
only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty ; only 
the tenderest heart in the world stricken and 
wounded, and passed away now out of reach of 
pangs of hope deferred, love insulted, and pitiless 
desertion — only that lock of hair left, and mem- 
ory and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, 
shuddering over the grave of his victim. 

And yet to have had so much love, he must 
have given some. Treasures of wit, and wisdom, 
and tenderness, too, must that man have locked 
up in the caverns of his gloomy heart, and shown 
fitfully to one or two whom he took in there. 
But it was not good to visit that place. People 
did not remain there long, and suffered for having 
been there. He shrank away from all affections 
sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both died 
near him, and away from him. He had not heart 
enough to see them die. He broke from his fast- 
est friend, Sheridan ; he slunk away from his 
fondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars on one's 
ear after seven-score years. He was always 



HOGARTH. 167 

alone — alone and gnashing in the darkness, except 
when Stella's sweet smile came and shone upon 
him. When that went, silence and utter night 
closed over him. An immense genius ; an awful 
downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to 
me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an 
empire falling. We have other great names to 
mention — none I think, however, so great or so 
gloomy. — Lectures on the English Humorists, 

HOGARTH. 

Posterity has not quite confirmed honest Ho- 
garth's opinion about his talents for the sublime. 
Although Swift could not see the difference be- 
tween tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, posterity has 
not shared the Dean's contempt for Handel ; the 
world has discovered a difference between tweedle- 
dee and tweedle-dum, and given a hearty applause 
and admiration to Hogarth, too, but not exactly 
as a painter of Scriptural subjects or as a rival of 
Correggio. It does not take away one's liking 
for the man, or from the moral of his story, or the 
humor of it, from one's admiration for the prodi- 
gious merit of his performances, to remember that 
he persisted to the last in believing that the world 
was in a conspiracy against him with respect to 
his talents as a historical painter, and that a set 
of miscreants, as he called them, were employed 
to run his genius down. They say it was Liston's 
firm belief that he was a great and neglected tra- 



168 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

gic actor ; they say that every one of us believes 
in his heart, or would like to have others believe, 
that he is something which he is not. One of the 
most notorious of the " miscreants," Hogarth says, 
was Wilkes, who assailed him in the " North Brit- 
on "; the other was ChurchiD, who put the "North 
Briton " attack into heroic verse, and published 
his "Epistle to Hogarth." Hogarth replied by 
that caricature of Wilkes, in which the patriot 
still figures before us, with his Satanic grin and 
squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which 
he is represented as a bear with a staff, on which 
lie the first, lie the second, lie the tenth, is en- 
graved in unmistakable letters. There is very 
little mistake about honest Hogarth's satire : if 
he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws 
him with his head almost off ; and he tried to do 
the same for his enemies in this little controversy. 
" Having an old plate by me," says he, " with some 
parts ready, such as the background, and a dog, I 
began to consider how I could turn so much work 
laid aside to some account, and so patched up a 
print of Master Churchill, in the character of a 
bear ; the pleasure and pecuniary advantage which 
I derived from these two engravings, together 
with occasionally riding on horseback, restored 
me to as much health as I can expect at my time 
of life." 

And so he concludes his queer little book of 
Anecdotes : " I have gone through the circum- 



PRIOR. 169 

stances of a life which till lately passed pretty much 
to my own satisfaction, and I hope in no respect 
injurious to any other man. This I may safely 
assert, that I have done my best to make those 
about me tolerably happy, and my greatest enemy 
can not say I ever did an intentional injury. What 
may follow, God knows." — Lectures on the Eng- 
lish Humorists. 

PEIOE. 

Matthew Prior was one of those famous and 
lucky wits of the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, 
whose name it behooves us not to pass over. Mat 
was a world philosopher of no small genius, good 
nature, and acumen. He loved, he drank, he sang. 
He describes himself in one of his lyrics, " in a 
little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night : on his 
left hand his Horace, and a friend on his right," 
going out of town from the Hague to pass that 
evening and the ensuing Sunday boozing at a Spiel- 
haus with his companions ; perhaps bobbing for 
perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain 
and with a grace not unworthy of his epicurean 
master, the charm of his idleness, his retreat, and 
his Batavian Chloe. A vintner's son in White- 
hall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the 
Rod, Prior attracted some notice by wi'iting verses 
at St. John's College, Cambridge, and, coming 
up to town, aided Montague in an attack on the 
noble old English lion, John Dryden, in ridicule 



170 STrvAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

of whose work, " The Hind and the Panther," he 
brought out that remarkable and famous burlesque, 
" The Town and Country Mouse." Are not you 
all acquainted with it ? Have you not all got it 
by heart ? What ! have you never heard of it ? 
See what fame is made of ! The wonderful part 
of the satire was that, as a natural consequence 
of "The Town and Country Mouse," Matthew 
Prior was made Secretary of Embassy at the 
Hague ! I believe it is dancing, rather than sing- 
ing, which distinguishes the young English diplo- 
matists of the present day ; and have seen them 
in various parts perform that part of their duty 
very finely. In Prior's time it appears a different 
accomplishment led to preferment. Could you 
write a copy of Alcaics ? that was the question. 
Could you turn out a neat epigram or two? 
Could you compose "The Town and Country 
Mouse ? " It is manifest that, by the possession 
of this faculty, the most difficult treaties, the laws 
of foreign nations, and the interests of our own 
are easily understood. . . . News came that the 
Queen was dead. . . . Poor Mat was recalled from 
his embassy, suffered disgrace along with his pa- 
trons, lived under a sort of cloud ever after, and 
disappeared in Essex. — Lectures on the JEhglish 
Humorists. 

GAY. 

In the portraits of the literary worthies of the 
early part of the last century, Gay's face is the 



GAY. 171 

pleasantest, perhaps, of all. It appears adorned 
with neither periwig nor night-cap (the full dress 
and negligee of learning, without which the paint- 
ers of those days scarcely ever portrayed wits), 
and he laughs at you over his shoulder with an 
honest, boyish glee — an artless, sweet humor. He 
was so kind, so gentle, so jocular, so delightfully 
brisk at times, so dismally woe-begone at others, 
such a natural, good creature that the Giants 
loved him. The great Swift was gentle and spor- 
tive with him as the enormous Brobdingnag maids 
of honor were with little Gulliver. He could frisk 
and fondle round Pope, and sport, and bark, and 
caper without offending the most thin-skinned of 
poets and men ; and, when he was jilted in that 
little court affair of which we have spoken, his 
warm-hearted patrons, the Duke and Duchess of 
Queensberry (the "Kitty, beautiful and young," 
of Prior), pleaded his cause with indignation, and 
quitted the court in a huff, carrying off with them 
into their retirement their kind, gentle protege. 
With these kind, lordly folks, a real duke and 
duchess, as delightful as those who harbored Don 
Quixote, and loved the dear old Sancho, Gay lived, 
and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of 
chicken, and his saucer of cream, and frisked, and 
barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, and so ended. 
He became very melancholy and lazy, sadly ple- 
thoric, and only occasionally diverting, in his latter 
days. But everybody loved him, and the remem- 



172 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

brance of his pretty little tricks ; and the raging 
old Dean of St. Patrick's, chafing in his banish- 
ment, was afraid to open the letter which Pope 
wrote him, announcing the sad news of the death 
of Gay. — Lectures on the English Humorists. 

CONGEEVE. 

Words, like men, pass current for awhile with 
the public, and, being known everywhere abroad, 
at length take their places in society ; so even the 
most secluded and refined ladies here present will 
have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers 
at school, and will permit me to call William Con- 
greve, Esquire, the most eminent literary '* swell " 
of his age. In my copy of "Johnson's Lives" 
Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the 
jauntiest air, of all the laureled worthies. "I 
am the great Mr. Congreve," he seems to say, 
looking out from his voluminous curls. People 
called him the great Mr. Congreve. From the 
beginning of his career until the end everybody 
admired him. Having got his education in Ire- 
land, at the same school and college with Swift ; 
he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, 
where he luckily bestowed no attention to the 
law, but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses 
and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the 
tavern, the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beauti- 
ful, and victorious from the first. Everybody 
acknowledged the young chieftain. The great 



CONGREVE. 173 

Mr. Dryden declared that lie was equal to Shakes- 
peare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed 
poetical crown; and writes of him, " Mr. Congreve 
has done me the favor to review the ' ^neis,' and 
compare my version with the original. I shall 
never be ashamed to own that this excellent young- 
man has showed me many faults which I have 
endeavored to correct." The "excellent young 
man" was but twenty three or four when the 
great Dryden thus spoke of him. 

Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was 
admired in the drawing-rooms as well as the cof- 
fee-houses ; as much beloved in the side-box as on 
the stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted the 
beautiful Bracegirdle, the heroine of all his plays, 
the favorite of all the town of her day ; and the 
Duchess of Marlborough, Marlborough's daugh- 
ter, had such an admiration of him, that when he 
died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him, 
and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed 
just as the great Congreve's gouty feet were 
dressed in his great life-time. He saved some 
money by his pipe office, and his custom-house of- 
fice, and his hackney-coach office, and nobly left 
it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it, but to the 
Duchess of Marlborough, who did not. 

There is life and death going on in everything : 
truth and lies are always at battle. Pleasure is 



174 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is 
always crying Pshaw ! and sneering. A man in 
life, a humorist in writing about life, sways over 
to one principle or the other, and laughs with the 
reverence for right and the love of truth in his 
heart, or laughs at these from the other side. 
Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious busi- 
ness to Harlequin ? I have read two or three of 
Congreve's plays over before speaking of him ; 
and my feelings were rather like those, which I 
dare say most of us here have had, at Pompeii, 
looking at Sallust's house and the relics of an 
orgy, a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper 
table, the breast of a dancing-girl pressed against 
the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester, a perfect 
stillness round about, as the Cicerone twangs his 
moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the 
ruin. The Congreve muse is dead, and her song 
choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, 
and wonder at the life which once reveled in its 
mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse over 
the frolic and daring, the wit, scorn, passion, hope, 
desire, with which that empty bowl once fer- 
mented. We think of the glances that allured, 
the tears that melted, of the bright eyes that 
shone in those vacant sockets ; and of lips whis- 
pering love, and cheeks dimpling with smiles, 
that once covered yon ghastly yellow framework. 
They used to call those teeth pearl once. See ! 
there's the cup she drank from, the gold chain she 



CONGREVE. 175 

wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge 
for her cheeks, her looking-glass, and the harp she 
used to dance to. Instead of a feast we find a 
gravestone, and in place of a mistress, a few 
bones ! 

Reading in these plays now is like shutting 
your ears and looking at people dancing. What 
does it mean ? the measures, the grimaces, the 
bowing, shuffiing, and retreating, the cavalier soul 
advancing upon those ladies — those ladies and 
men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, 
after which everybody bows and the quaint rite 
is celebrated. Without the music we can not un- 
derstand that comic dance of the last century — 
its strange gravity and gayety, its decorum or its 
indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlike 
life ; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life, 
too. I'm afraid it's heathen mystery, symboliz- 
ing a pagan doctrine ; protesting, as the Pom- 
peians very likely were, assembled at their theatre 
and laughing at their games — as Sallust and his 
friends, and their mistresses protested — crowned 
with flowers, with cups in their hands, against the 
new, hard, ascetic pleasure-hating doctrine, whose 
gaunt disciples, lately passed over the Asian 
shores of the Mediterranean, were for breaking 
the fair images of Yenus and flinging the altars 
of Bacchus down. — Lectures on the English Su- 
morists. 



176 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

POPE. 

If the author of the " Dunciad " be not a hu- 
morist, if the poet of the " Rape of the Lock " be 
not a wit, who deserves to be called so ? Besides 
that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both 
of which we should respect him, men of letters 
should admire him as being one of the greatest lit- 
erary artists that England has seen. He polished, 
he refined, he thought ; he took thoughts from 
other works to adorn and complete his own ; 
borrowing an idea or a cadence from another 
poet as he would a figure or a simile from a flower, 
or a river, stream, or any object which struck 
him in his walk, or contemplation of Nature. 

In Johnson's "Life of Pope" you will find 
described with rather a malicious minuteness some 
of the personal habits and infirmities of great little 
Pope. His body was crooked ; " he was so short 
that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to 
place him on a level with other people at the ta- 
ble. He was sewed up in a buckram suit every 
morning, and required a nurse, like a child. His 
contemporaries reviled these misfortunes with a 
strange acrimony, and made his poor, deformed 
person the butt for many a bolt of heavy wit. 
The facetious Mr. Dennis, in speaking of him^ 
says, "If you take the first letter of Mr. Alex- 
ander Pope's Christian name, and the first and 



POPE. 177 

last letters of his surname, you have A. P. E." 
Pope catalogues, at the end of the "Dunciad," 
with a rueful precision, other pretty names, 
besides Ape, which Dennis called him. That 
great critic pronounced Mr. Pope was a little ass, 
a fool, a coward, a Papist, and therefore a hater 
of Scripture, and so forth. It must be remem- 
bered that the pillory was a flourishing and pop- 
ular institution in those days. Authors stood in 
it in the body sometimes : and dragged their en- 
emies thither morally, hooted them with foul 
abuse, and assailed them with garbage of the 
gutter. Poor Pope's figure was an easy one for 
those clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid 
hand could draw a hunchback, and write Pope 
underneath. They did. A libel was published 
against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This kind 
of rude jesting was an evidence not only of an ill 
nature, but a dull one. When a child makes a 
pun, or a lout breaks out into a laugh, it is some 
very obvious combination of words, or discrepancy 
of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, 
or tickles the boorish wag ; and many of Pope's 
revilers laughed, not so much because they were 
wicked, as because they knew no better. 

The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which 
led him to cultivate the society of persons of fine 
manners, of wit or taste or beauty, caused him to 
shrink equally from that shabby and boisterous 
crew which formed the rank and file of literature 
12 



178 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY 

in his time ; and be was as unjust to these men 
as they were to him. The delicate little creature 
sickened at the habits and company which were 
quite tolerable to robuster men ; and in the famous 
feud between Pope and the Dunces, and with- 
out attributing any peculiar wrong to either, one 
can quite understand how the two parties should 
so hate each other. As I fancy, it was a sort of 
necessity that, when Pope's triumph passed, Mr. 
Addison and his men should look rather contemp- 
tuously down on it from their balcony ; so it was 
natural for Dennis and Tibbald, and Webster and 
Cibber, and the worn and hungry pressmen in the 
crowd below, to howl at him and assail him. And 
Pope was more savage to Grub Street than Grub 
Street was to Pope. The thong with which he 
lashed them was dreadful ; he fired upon that 
howling crew such shafts of flame and poison, he 
slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the 
" Dunciad " and the prose lampoons of Pope, one 
feels disposed to side against the ruthless little ty- 
rant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon 
whom he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, and 
Swift to aid him, who established among us the 
Grub Street tradition. He revels in base descrip- 
tions of poor men's want ; he gloats over poor 
Dennis's garret, and flannel night-cap, and red 
stockings ; he gives instructions how to find Curll's 
authors, the historian at the tallow-chandler's un- 
der the blind arch in Petty France, the two trans- 



POPE. 179 

lators in bed together, the poet in the cock-loft in 
Budge Row, whose landlady keeps the ladder. 
It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, more than 
any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary 
calling. It was not an unj)rosperous one before 
that time, as we have seen ; at least there were 
great prizes in the profession which had made Ad- 
dison a minister, and Prior an ambassador, and 
Steele a commissioner, and Swift all but a bishop. 
The profession of letters was ruined by that libel 
of the " Dunciad." If authors were wretched and 
poor before, if some of them lived in hay-lofts, of 
which their landladies kept the ladders, at least 
nobody came to disturb them in their straw ; if 
three of them had but one coat between them, the 
two remained invisible in the garret ; the third, at 
any rate, appeared decently at the coffee-house, 
and paid his twopence like a gentleman. It was 
Pope that dragged into light all this poverty and 
meanness, and held up those wretched shifts and 
rags to public ridicule. It was Pope that has 
made generations of the reading world (delighted 
with the mischief, as who would not be that reads 
it ?) believe that author and wretch, author and 
rags, author and dirt, author and drink, gin, cow- 
heel, tripe, poverty, duns, bailiffs, squalling chil- 
dren, and clamorous landladies, were always asso- 
ciated together. The condition of authorship be- 
gan to fall from the days of the " Dunciad," and I 
believe in my heart that much of that obloquy 



180 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

which has since pursued our calling was occa- 
sioned by Pope's libels and wicked wit. 

In speaking of a work of consummate art, one 
does not try to show what it is, for that were vain ; 
but what it is like, and what are the sensations 
produced in the mind of him who views it. And, 
in considering Pope's admirable career, I am forced 
into similitudes drawn from other courage and 
greatness, and into comparing him with those who 
achieved triumphs in actual war. I think of the 
works of young Pope as I do of the actions of 
young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their com- 
mon life you will find frailties and meannesses, as 
great as the vices and follies of the meanest men. 
But, in the presence of the great occasion, the 
great soul flashes out, and conquers transcendent. 
In thinking of the splendor of Pope's young vic- 
tories, of his merit, unequaled as his renown, I 
hail and salute the achieving genius, and do hom- 
age to the pen of a Hero. — Lectures on the Eng- 
lisJi Humorists. 

SMOLLETT AND FIELDING. 

We have before us, and painted by his own 
hand, Tobias Smollett, the manly, kingly, honest, 
irascible, worn out and battered, but still brave 
and full of heart, after a long struggle against a 
hard fortune. His brain had been busied with a 
hundred different schemes ; he had been reviewer 



SMOLLETT AND FIELDING. 181 

and historian, critic, medical writer, poet, pamphlet" 
eer. He had fought endless literary battles ; and 
braved and wielded for years the cudgels of con- 
troversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those 
days, and a niggard pay. He was oppressed by 
illness, age, narrow fortune ; but his spirit was 
still resolute, and his courage steady ; the battle 
over, he could do justice to the enemy with whom 
he had been so fiercely engaged, and give a not 
unfriendly grasp to the hand that had mauled 
him. He is like one of those Scotch cadets, of 
whom history gives us so many examples, and 
whom, with a national fidelity, the great Scotch 
novelist has painted so charmingly. Of gentle 
birth and narrow means, going out from his 
Northern home to win his fortune in the world, 
and to fight his way, armed with courage, hunger, 
and keen wits. His crest is a shattered oak-tree, 
with green leaves yet springing from it. On his 
ancient coat of arms there is a lion and a horn ; 
this shield of his was battered and dinted in a 
hundred fights and brawls, through which the 
stout Scotchman bore it courageously. You see, 
somehow, that he is a gentleman, through all his 
battling and struggling, his poverty, his hard- 
fought successes, and his defeats. His novels are 
recollections of his own adventures ; his characters 
drawn, as I should think, from personages with 
whom he became acquainted in his own career of 
life. Strange companions he must have had ; 



182 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

queer acquaintances lie made in the Glasgow Col- 
lege, in the country apothecary's shop, in the 
gun-room of the man-of-war, where he served as 
surgeon, and in the hard life on shore, where the 
sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He did 
not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest 
perceptive faculty, and described what he saw 
with wonderful relish and delightful broad humor. 

Fielding, too, has described, though with a 
greater hand, the characters and scenes which he 
knew and saw. He had more than ordinary op- 
portunities for becoming acquainted with life. 
His family and education first, his fortunes and 
misfortunes afterward, brought him into the so- 
ciety of every rank and condition of man. He is 
himself the hero of his books : he is wild Tom 
Jones, he is wild Captain Booth, less wild, I am 
glad to think, than his predecessor, at least heart- 
ily conscious of demerit, and anxious to amend. 

I can not offer or hope to make a hero of Har- 
ry Fielding. Why hide his faults? Why con- 
ceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases? 
Why not show him as he is, not robed in a marble 
toga, and draped and polished in an heroic atti- 
tude, but with inked ruffles, and claret stains on 
his tarnished lace coat, and on his manly face the 
marks of good fellowship, of illness, of kindness, 
of care, of wine. Stained as you see him, and 
worn by care and dissipation, that man retains 



SMOLLETT AND FIELDING. 183 

some of the most precious and splendid human 
qualities and endowments. He has an admirable 
natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive an- 
tipathy to hypocrisy, the happiest satirical gift of 
laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully wise 
and detective ; it flashes upon a rogue and light- 
ens up a rascal like a policeman's lantern. He is 
one of the manliest and kindliest of human be- 
ings : in the midst of all his imperfections, he 
respects female innocence and infantine tender- 
ness, as you would suppose such a great-hearted, 
courageous soul would respect and care for them. 
He could not be so brave, generous, truth-telling 
as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, 
and tender. He will give any man his purse — he 
can not help kindness and profusion. He may 
have low tastes, but not a mean mind ; he ad- 
mires with all his heart good and virtuous men, 
stoops to no flattery, bears no rancor, disdains all 
disloyal arts, does his public duty uprightly, is 
fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work. 

What a wonderful art ! what an admirable 
gift of nature was it by which the author of 
these tales was endowed, and which enabled him 
to fix our interest, to awaken our sympathy, to 
seize upon our credulity so that we believe in his 
people — speculate gravely upon their faults or 
their excellences, prefer this one or that, deplore 
Jones's fondness for drink and play. Booth's fond- 



184 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

ness for play and drink, and the unfortunate posi- 
tion of the wives of both gentlemen — love and 
admire those ladies with all our hearts, and talk 
about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted 
with them this morning in their actual drawing- 
rooms, or should meet them this afternoon in the 
park ! What a genius ! Avhat a vigor ! what a 
bright-eyed intelligence and observation ! what a 
wholesome hatred of meanness and knavery ! what 
a vast sympathy ! what a cheerfulness ! what a 
manly relish of life ! what a love of humankind ! 
what a poet is here I — watching, meditating, 
brooding, creating ! What multitudes of truth 
has that man left behind him ! what generations 
he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly ! what 
scholars he has formed and accustomed to the 
exercise of thoughtful humor and the manly play 
of wit ! What courage he had ! what a dauntless 
and constant cheerfulness of intellect that burned, 
bright and steady, through all the storms of his 
life, and never deserted its last wreck ! It is 
wonderful to think of the pains and misery which 
the man suffered ; the pressure of want, illness, 
remorse which he endured ; and that the writer 
was neither malignant nor melancholy, his view 
of truth never warped, and his generous human 
kindness never surrendered. 

Fielding reminds one of those brave men of 
whom one reads in stories of English shipwrecks 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 185 

and disasters — of the officer on the African shore, 
when disease has destroyed the crew, and he him- 
self is seized by fever, who throws the lead with 
a death-stricken hand, takes the soundings, car- 
ries the ship out of the river or off the dangerous 
coast, and dies in the manly endeavor — of the 
wounded captain, when the vessel founders, who 
never loses his heart, who eyes the danger stead- 
ily, and has a cheery word for all, until the inev- 
itable fate overwhelms him, and the gallant ship 
goes down. Such a brave and gentle heart, such 
an intrepid and courageous spirit, I love to recog- 
nize in the manly, the English Harry Fielding. — 
Lectures on the English Humorists. 

STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 

There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has 
something that were better away, a latent corrup- 
tion — a hint, as of an impure presence. Some of 
that dreary double entendre may be attributed to 
freer times and manners than ours, but not all. 
The foul Satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves con- 
stantly : the last words the famous author wrote 
were bad and wicked — the last lines the poor, 
stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon. 
I think of these past writers, and of one who lives 
among us now, and am grateful for the innocent 
laughter and the sweet and unsullied page which 
the author of " David Copperfield " gives to my 
children. 



186 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 



" Jete sur cette boule, 
Laid, chetif et souffrant ; 
Etouffe dans la foule, 
Faute d'etre assez grand ; 

*' Une plainte touchante 
De ma bouche sortit ; 
Le bon Dieu me dit : 01 1 ante, 
Chante, pauvre petit ! 

" Chanter, ou je m'abuse. 
Est ma tacbe ici bas. 
Tons ceux qn'ain si j 'amuse, 
Ne m'aimeront-ils pas? " * 

" A castaway on this great earth, 
A sickly child of humble birth 

And homely feature. 
Before me rushed the swift and strong ; 
I thought to perish in the throng, 

Poor puny creature. 

" Then crying in my loneliness, 
I prayed that Heaven in my distress 
Some aid would bring, 
And pitying my misery, 
My guardian angel said to me, 
Sing, poet, sing. 

" Since then my grief is not so sharp, 
I know my lot and tune my harp. 

And chant my ditty ; 
And kindly voices cheer the bard, 
And gentle hearts his song reward 

With love and pity." 

In those charming lines of B^ranger, one may 
fancy described the career, the sufferings, the 

* Thackeray has himself rendered this little song into Eng- 
lish as follows, and it is less a translation than an adaptation : 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 187 

genius, the gentle nature of Goldsmith, and the 
esteem in which we hold him. Who, of the mil- 
lions whom he has amused, does not love him ? 
To be the most beloved of English writers, what 
a title that is for a man ! A wild youth, way- 
ward but full of tenderness and affection, quits 
the country village where his boyhood has been 
passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond 
longing to see the great world out-of-doors, and 
achieve name and fortune — and, after years of dire 
struggle and neglect and poverty, his heart turn- 
ing back as fondly to his native place as it had 
longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, 
he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollec- 
tions and feelings of home — he paints the friends 
and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and 
Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. Wan- 
der he must, but he carries away a home relic 
with him, and dies with it on his breast. His na- 
ture is truant ; in repose it longs for change, as 
on the journey it looks for friends and quiet. He 
passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-mor- 
row, or in writing yesterday's elegy ; and he 
would fly away this hour but that a cage and 
necessity keeps him. What is the charm of his 
verse, of his style and humor ? His sweet regrets, 
his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremu- 
lous sympathy, the weakness which he owns? 
Your love for him is holy pity. You come hot 
and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet 



188 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the 
kind vagrant harper ? Whom did he ever hurt ? 
He carries no weapon — save the harp on which 
he plays to you ; and with which he delights 
great and humble, young and old, the captains in 
the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the 
women and children in the villages, at whose 
porches he stops and sings his simple songs of 
love and beauty. With that sweet story of the 
" Yicar of Wakefield " he has found entry into 
every castle and every hamlet in Europe. Not 
one of us, however busy or hard, but once or 
twice in our lives has passed an evening with 
him, and undergone the charm of his delightful 
music. 

His name is the last in the list of those men of 
humor who have formed the themes of the dis- 
courses which you have heard so kindly. Long 
before I had ever hoped for such an audience, or 
dreamed of the possibility of the good fortune 
which has brought me so many friends, I was at 
issue with some of my literary brethren upon a 
point — which they held from tradition, I think, 
rather than experience — that our profession was 
neglected in this country, and that men of letters 
were ill received and held in slight esteem. It 
would hardly be grateful of me now to alter my 
old opinion that we do meet with good-will and 
kindness, with generous, helping hands in the time 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 189 

of our necessity, with cordial and friendly recog- 
nition. What claim had any one of these of whom 
I have been speaking, but genius ? What return 
of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to 
all? What punishment befell those who were 
unfortunate among them, but that which follows 
reckless habits and careless lives ? For these 
faults a wit must suffer like the dullest prodigal 
that ever ran in debt. He must pay the tailor if 
he wears the coat ; his children must go in rags 
if he spends his money at the tavern ; he can not 
come to London and be made Lord Chancellor if 
he stops on the road and gambles away his last 
shilling at Dublin. And he must pay the social 
penalty of these follies too, and expect that the 
world will shun the man of bad habits, that women 
will avoid the man of loose life, that prudent folks 
will close their doors as a precaution, and before 
a demand should be made on their pockets by the 
needy prodigal. With what difficulty had any 
one of these men to contend, save that external 
and mechanical one of want of means and lack of 
capital, and of which thousands of young lawyers, 
young doctors, young soldiers and sailors, of in- 
ventors, manufacturers, and shopkeepers have to 
complain? Hearts as brave and as resolute as 
ever beat in the breast of any wit or poet sicken 
and break daily in the vain endeavor and unavail- 
ing struggle against life's difficulty. Do we not 
see daily ruined inventors, gray-haired midship- 



190 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

men, balked heroes, blighted curates, barristers 
pining a hungry life out in chambers, the attor- 
neys never mounting to their garrets, while scores 
of them are rapping at the door of the successful 
quack below ? If those suffer, who is the author 
that he should be exempt ? Let us bear our ills 
with the same constancy with which others endure 
them, accept our manly part in life, hold our own, 
and ask no more. I can conceive of no kings or 
laws causing or curing Goldsmith's improvidence, 
or Fielding's fatal love of pleasure, or Dick Steele's 
mania for running races with the constable. You 
never can outrun that sure-footed officer — not by 
any swiftness or by dodges devised by any genius, 
however great, and he carries off the " Tatler " to 
the sponging-house, or ta]3S the Citizen of the 
"World on the shoulder as he would any other 
mortal. 

Does society look down on a man because he 
is an author ? I suppose if people want a buffoon 
they tolerate him only in so far as he is amusing ; 
it can hardly be expected that they should respect 
him as an equal. Is there to be a guard of honor 
provided for the author of the last new novel or 
poem ? How long is he to reign, and keep other 
potentates out of possession ? He Retires, grum- 
bles, and prints a lamentation that literature is 
despised. If Captain A. is left out of Lady B.'s 
parties, he does not state that the army is despised ; 
if Lord C. no longer asks Counselor D. to dinner, 



STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 191 

Counselor D. does not announce that the bar is 
insulted. He is not fair to society if he enters it 
with this suspicion hankering about him ; if he is 
doubtful about his reception, how hold up his 
head honestly, and look frankly in the face that 
world about which he is full of suspicion ? Is he 
place-hunting, and thinking in his mind that he 
ought to be made an Ambassador, like Prior, or a 
Secretary of State, like Addison ? his pretense of 
equality falls to the ground at once ; he is schem- 
ing for a patron, not shaking the hand of a friend, 
when he meets the world. Treat such a man as 
he deserves ; laugh at his buffoonery, and give 
him a dinner and a honjoicr ; laugh at his self- 
sufficiency and absurd assumptions of superiority, 
and his equally ludicrous airs of martyrdom ; 
laugh at his flattery and his scheming, and buy it, 
if it is worth the having. Let the wag have his 
dinner, and the hireling his pay, if you want him, 
and make a profound bow to the grand homme 
incompriSy and the boisterous martyr, and show 
him the door. The great world — the great aggre- 
gate experience — has its good sense, as it has its 
good humor. It detects a pretender, as it trusts 
a loyal heart. It is kind in the main : how should 
it be otherwise than kind when it is so wise and 
clear-headed? To any literary man who says, 
" It despises my profession," I say, with all my 
might — no, no, no. It may pass over your indi- 
vidual case — how many a brave fellow has failed 



192 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 

in the race, and perished unknown in the struggle ! 
— but it treats you as you merit in the main. If 
you serve it, it is not unthankful ; if you please, 
it is pleased ; if you cringe to it, it detects you, 
and scorns you if you are mean ; it returns your 
cheerfulness with its good humor ; it deals not 
ungenerously with your weaknesses ; it recognizes 
most kindly your merits ; it gives you a fair place 
and fair play. To any one of those men of whom 
we have spoken, was it in the main ungrateful ? 
A king might refuse Goldsmith a pension, as a 
publisher might keep his masterpiece and the de- 
light of all the world in his desk for two years ; 
but it was a mistake, and not ill-will. I^oble and 
illustrious names of Swift, and Pope, and Addi- 
son ! dear and honored memories of Goldsmith 
and Fielding ! kind friends, teachers, and benefac- 
tors ! who shall say that our country, which con- 
tributes to bring you such an unceasing tribute of 
applause, admiration, love, sympathy, does not do 
honor to the literary calling in the honor which it 
bestows upon you! — Lectures on the Miglish 
Humorists. 



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